The Timor Oil Company’s network, 1956–1968: Interacting internal and external infrastructures

Abstract

Since the signing of the bilateral Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS) Treaty with Australia in January 2006, US$16.69 billion has been deposited in Timor-Leste's sovereign wealth fund (Petroleum Fund of Timor-Leste 2017), albeit with production declining by a half over a period of 10 years since 2006 (EIA 2015). Since the introduction of an 'Infrastructure Fund' in the state budget in 2011, an average of 44 per cent has been budgeted on infrastructure expenditures, with a high-water mark of 53 per cent of expenditures in 2012 (La'o Hamutuk 2018). This includes the planned development of refining and processing facilities on the country's south coast, envisaged as receiving supplies of oil and gas both from the Timor Sea and onshore deposits, as well as attracting oil and gas for refining from other countries. It is therefore unsurprising that the state, and many citizens, view the very heart of Timor-Leste's development as located in the Timor Sea, the site of oil and gas exploration since the mid-1960s. However, state and oil company interest in onshore areas predated offshore exploration. This chapter examines onshore oil exploration on the south coast of Portuguese Timor in the mid-twentieth century. It begins by showing how perceptions of oil wealth on the part of foreign oil companies and

Economic Diversity In Contemporary Timor-Leste

“…While investment in urbanisation in the late-1940s was very low, the largest aggregate investments in urbanisation in any colony by the portuguese metropolitan state during the period 1946-1972 were made in Timor and São Tomé e príncipe (Madeira 2008, 414). The value of these investments was not recouped from the colony: the authorities had hoped for a windfall following oil exploration but by 1963, such hopes had been repeatedly frustrated (Grainger 2018). hence, in this last section, The Guc (after 1951, Guu or Gabinete de Urbanização de Ultramar, Overseas urbanisation committee) was highly centralised, meaning that its personnel were largely sent from Lisbon, which consequently restricted its capacity to act in far-flung colonies such as Timor (vaz Milheiro and costa dias 2010, 84).…”