Timor-Leste: Timorese Go to the Polls Unaware of 'Gas Shadow' over Their Nation's Future


Jul 21, 2017 | Lindsay Murdoch, Sydney Morning Herald
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More than 750,000 East Timorese will cast votes on Saturday to elect a government that will face tough negotiations  that could deliver the poverty-stricken nation billions of dollars or - should they fail - send it into bankruptcy, possibly within a decade.  Negotiations to develop the Greater Sunrise gas field, which straddles waters claimed by East Timor and Australia, have become more urgent as investors, including US giant ConocoPhillips, have accelerated plans in early July to pipe gas from a field called Barossa, 300 kilometres north of Darwin, to a liquefied natural gas plant built on a mangrove swamp at Darwin's Wickham Point.