According to Mr Voelte, the Shell-designed facility will be approximately 480 metres in length and approximately 75 metres wide, with a topside weight of approximately 50,000 tonnes. He said that it will have the capacity to produce approximately 4 million tonnes per annum (MMt/a) of LNG and 10.3 million barrels of oil per annum (MMbbl/a) of condensate, and that the facility will feature a side-by-side offloading configuration with offloading rates of 10,000 cubic metres per hour.

“Evaluation results demonstrate that FLNG has robust economics, maximising total revenue to Australia and Timor-Leste and maximising the return to the Sunrise joint venture,” Mr Voelte said.

In contrast to claims made by the Timor-Leste National Petroleum Authority that Woodside executives had not lodged a facility development plan for the FLNG proposal, Mr Voelte said “A detailed analysis of each of the three development options was included in the detailed report presented to the regulators in Dili...now it is time for the regulators to properly consider that analysis.”

“The International Unitisation Agreement (IUA) apportions 79.9 per cent of the Greater Sunrise oil and gas resource to Australia and 20.1 per cent to the Joint Petroleum Development Area (JPDA). Under the Timor Sea Treaty, 90 per cent of the oil and gas located in the JPDA is apportioned to Timor-Leste and 10 per cent to Australia. The combined effect of the IUA and the Timor Sea Treaty is that approximately 82 per cent of Greater Sunrise oil and gas is apportioned to Australia and approximately 18 per cent to Timor-Leste.

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"The final piece of the treaty puzzle is the Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea treaty, which provides for the even distribution of upstream petroleum revenues from Greater Sunrise. Effectively, this more than doubles the petroleum revenue to be received by Timor-Leste.

“Contrary to what you may hear in the media about the Sunrise joint venture ‘stealing’ the resource from Timor-Leste, let me just say that based on joint venture modelling assumptions...Timor-Leste will earn approximately $US13 billion ($A15.4 billion) over the life of the project for its 18 per cent share,” Mr Voelte added.

He also said that the FLNG model was unanimously selected by the joint venture following rigorous evaluation of all options available, and that Woodside was committed to fulfilling all of its regulatory obligations.

“We found that there were no technical impediments to [a Timor-Leste LNG plant], however it has the highest capital cost by approximately $5 billion compared to FLNG and presents significant technical risks,” Mr Voelte said. Examples given by Mr Voelte of those risks included the extensive infrastructure needed at the proposed site, as well as the impact of water depths on pipeline operability at the site.

Under several recently-signed treaties, both the Australian and Timor-Leste regulators must provide ‘in principle’ approval of the FLNG concept prior to submission of a development plan for approval.