The Portuguese colonial administration also granted concessions to Oceanic Exploration Corporation to develop oil and gas deposits.

[19] The treaty established guidelines for joint exploitation of seabed resources in the area of the "gap" left by then-Portuguese Timor in the maritime boundary agreed between the two countries in 1972.

In late 1999, about 70% of the economic infrastructure of Timor-Leste was destroyed by Indonesian troops and anti-independence militias,[1] and 260,000 people fled westward.

From 2002 to 2005, an international program led by the United Nations, manned by civilian advisers, 5,000 peacekeepers (8,000 at peak) and 1,300 police officers, substantially reconstructed the infrastructure.

[21] While Timor-Leste gained revenue from offshore oil and gas reserves, little of it has been spent on the development of villages, which still rely on subsistence farming.

The country fared particularly poorly in the "registering property", "enforcing contracts", and "resolving insolvency" categories, ranking last worldwide in all three.

[25] Regarding telecommunications infrastructure, Timor-Leste is the second to last ranked Asian country in the World Economic Forum's Network Readiness Index (NRI), with only Myanmar falling behind it in Southeast Asia.

[33] The Portuguese colonial administration granted concessions to the Australia-bound Oceanic Exploration Corporation to develop petroleum and natural gas deposits in the waters southeast of Timor.

[37] In 2013, Timor-Leste launched a case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague to pull out of a gas treaty that it had signed with Australia, accusing the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) of bugging the East Timorese cabinet room in Dili in 2004.

[24]: 23 Electricidade De Timor-Leste (EDTL) is the vertically integrated monopoly generator and distributor of electric power within the on-grid areas.

One promising long-term project is the joint development with Australia of petroleum and natural gas resources in the waters southeast of Timor-Leste.

[44] The first significant new development in the JPDA since East Timorese independence is the largest petroleum resource in the Timor Sea, the Greater Sunrise gas field.

[45] The government of Timor-Leste has sought to negotiate a definite boundary with Australia at the halfway line between the countries, in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The government of Australia preferred to establish the boundary at the end of the wide Australian continental shelf, as agreed with Indonesia in 1972 and 1991.

[47] Nevertheless, under public and diplomatic pressure, the Australian government offered instead a last-minute concession solely on royalties from the Greater Sunrise gas field.