US$16 billion ‘hoax’: reports of Chinese loan for East Timor gas project were politically motivated, says foreign minister
- East Timor is looking for international partners to finance its Greater Sunrise gas project, tapping some of the country’s last remaining resources
- Foreign ministers from both countries have been talking about cooperating in the petrochemical industry
East Timor wants to cooperate with China in the oil and gas industry, but reports that Dili would borrow US$16 billion from China’s Export-Import Bank to finance one such project were a “hoax”, the country’s Foreign Minister Dionísio da Costa Babo Soares declared.
The country is also considering other partners, he said on Monday in an exclusive interview with This Week in Asia.
“Timor-Leste is calculating the different values presented in the market and will make the decision about our partners without jeopardising our own economy,” he said.
The government’s plan for the project includes an undersea pipeline to the island’s south coast, which it hopes to turn into a petroleum processing hub.
Multinational fuel companies Shell and ConocoPhillips recently sold their stakes in the project back to East Timor’s state fuel company Timor Gap partly due to the government’s unwillingness to compromise on building the pipeline across the undersea Timor Trench, rather sending the gas through existing pipelines headed for Darwin.
