Timor-Leste Looks to Use Oil Revenues to Kick-Start Economy and Development
By Sam Polk
The president of Timor-Leste, José Ramos Horta, was in Canberra yesterday to inaugurate what the BBC calls a “gift embassy” – the new Embassy of Timor-Leste to Australia was entirely financed through charitable contributions through the government of Australia. But the five-day visit comes amid strained relations between the eight-year-old nation and Australia, its largest aid donor. A bitter standoff between Timor-Leste’s government and an Australian oil company has reinvigorated debate over how best to use the country’s petroleum wealth to fuel development, and the role outsiders play in the country’s affairs.

Timor-Leste remains in dire need of infrastructure development, and health and education have suffered under Portuguese colonial rule and then Indonesian occupation, and from the civil strife in the years since the 1999 referendum on independence from Indonesia. Photo by Conor Ashleigh
The subject of the dispute – which follows on years of acrimonious negotiations over access to petroleum found beneath the Timor Sea – is the potential location of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing plant.
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