A Country You’ve Never Heard Of Is Sitting On A Massive Offshore Field That Can Replace Russian Gas

This year has brought unrivaled chaos to the global natural gas market. Russia’s weaponization of its European gas pipelines has left the continent scrambling for energy alternatives, and their urgent demand has caused prices to skyrocket. The current price of $51/btu is an order of magnitude higher than the prices just two years ago, and double the gas price it traded at in May.

The sky-high prices have incentivized investment in natural gas production across the globe, and the hope is that new supply reserves and demand destruction could stabilize the market at a price closer to historical norms sooner rather than later.

One country that may soon join the natural gas market in a major way and help alleviate high prices is East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste.

The country has had a history marred by oppression and violence: It was a colony of Portugal until 1975, but shortly thereafter the Indonesian army invaded it and effectively made it a part of its country. Over 250,000 people died over the whole period as the Timorese revolted against their annexation.

In 1998 the East Timorese organized a referendum for independence after the overthrow of Indonesia’s corrupt strongman, President Suharto, which passed overwhelmingly. It has been an independent country for slightly over twenty years.

It has a population slightly over 1 million and a largely undeveloped economy, but it also has an enormous natural gas field in its territorial waters. Conservative estimates put the size of that field at more than 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, but some experts believe the subsea geology is such that the actual number could be 10 times that. The country is anxious to develop this field; the current government aspires to create something akin to Norway’s wealth fund in order to help fund development projects and other services for its population. Given the size of the field and the country’s population, such a fund could one day generate a per-capita revenue stream for its population that rivals Norway.

Timor-Leste’s government—and its natural oil company—are aggressively seeking partners to help develop these fields. While developing these fields would be unalloyed good news for the East Timor population, there are potential pitfalls for the west as the country pursues partners. One of those is that China has indicated a keen interest in stepping in to “work” with East Timor – home to what Joshua Kurantzick, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has called a “vibrant democracy.”

For the Timorese, such a partnership would bring the very real possibility that China would leverage its investment in the field and the country to demand significant concessions from the government, as it has done in other countries with which it has partnered.

Another problem is that as China’s relationship with the western countries deteriorates, giving its economy access to a new and enormous gas field—undoubtedly with fixed prices and immune to sanctions or embargoes—would leave the U.S. and the West with one fewer stick to use against China.

The Timorese government and its development arm are saying all the right things about respecting the environment and wanting to protect its waters: given that a sizable proportion of its population still effectively lives off the land, the desire to maintain an unpolluted shoreline and waters is more than theoretical.

China’s aggressive expansion of its power has roiled the political dynamics in Southeast Asia, and the U.S. government has at times been dilatory in responding to these changes. Embracing East Timor’s gas development efforts is a sensible economic and geopolitical move that’s in line with U.S. interests, even if it’s happening in a place very few Americans could find on a map.