Timor Gap

During this time Australia and international oil companies were accused of pressuring Timor-Leste to accept a petroleum revenue-sharing formula while deferring permanent boundary resolution and foregoing legal avenues.

In Timor-Leste's view, this distribution could be disputed as it did not recognise the borders, drawn between Australia and Indonesia, which placed the bulk of Greater Sunrise in Australian territory.

On 20 February 2007, Timor-Leste's parliament agreed to ratify the agreement with Australia over the management of oil and gas resources in the Greater Sunrise field in the Timor Sea.

The Australian and Timor-Leste governments formally exchanged notes in Dili on 23 February 2007 to bring into force the two treaties that provided the legal and fiscal framework for the development of the Greater Sunrise gas field in the Timor Sea.

[3] On March 7, 2018, Australia and Timor-Leste announced that a treaty had been signed regarding the border and the exploitation of the Greater Sunrise gas field.

The two countries had failed to reach agreement on a preferred option for development of the Sunrise/Troubadour field, and annexes to the Treaty set out procedures for achieving this.