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The gas fields can be seen between East Timor and Australia
(Map courtesy GeoscienceAustralia via Asia Times, October 2020)
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Australia has already had a mixed
history with Timor Leste aka East Timor (ET) a new island nation ruled by politicians of
various old guard leftwing factions. After Australia was the major force that liberated
ET from the Indonesians in 1999,
ET became independent in 2002.
As
ET’s capital and harbour Dili is only 722 km from Darwin (map above) it is not a case of if, but when, China
debt traps ET. This is of high economic and strategic interest to Australia. 722 km is much closer to Australia than the 2,000 km distance of the Solomon Islands to Australia.
Australia and ET have long haggled over the undersea oil
and gas fields that lie between them.
Along comes a headline today Timor-Leste warns it will work with China if Australia insists on pumping Timor Sea gas to Darwin.
This may pan out that impoverished ET might receive enough
Chinese infrastructure loans to debt trap ET. The major loan might be for a gas
pipeline from the gas fields south of ET to a factory China would build in ET.
Given very few East Timorese are engineers or technicians it will be China laying
the pipeline, building and running the factory and probably reaping more gas revenue than ET.
Australian and other Western oil-gas companies have
considered the ET gas pipeline-factory project overly risky on sheer commercial grounds. One issue
concerning them is if they build a factory in ET, then ET’s predictably leftwing
governments might nationalise it.
But China has advantages to avoid nationalisation. It might directly bribing ET leaders before, during and after the project. The Chinese military will cross-subsidize such a venture for naval basing rights to Port of Dili and Chinese airforce access to ET's Baucau Airport. ET is too poor and only has small military-police forces, making it unable to hold China back.
East Timor with its oil-gas resources and closer proximity to the US-Australian Army base at Darwin and air base at Katherine would be quite a prize economically and strategically for China. Also a Chinese dominated East Timor is well sited in the southern Indonesian archipelago - to create problems for Indonesia.
Pete
ReplyDeleteThanks. It is hard to see China changing its predictable, but so far successful, strategy.
If China wound up with a base with SSMs in East Timor it is not only Darwin port that could be threatened. In the same way as Ukraine fired SSMs at Russian oil and gas rigs in the Black Sea, China could threaten to fire SSMs from East Timor to the very valuable gas installations at Barrow and NW Shelf off WA and NT. This would cripple Australia's gas export industry, now the world's second largest.
Hi Pete,
ReplyDeleteI think it's good that some smaller countries now have a counter to certain bullying big countries....as long as they don't actually allow China in, in the long run. Sometimes the big guy in the small pond can full of themselves.
Penny Wong has a big job ahead of her
Andrew
Hi Anon @Aug 22, 2022, 10:15:00 AM
ReplyDeleteYes China basing Surface to Surface Missiles (SSMs) on East Timor would be a headache for Australia taht we are not equipped to handle.
If the missiles were the usual Mach 10+ ballistic the 722km Dili to Darwin distance would provide no Aus-US command chain thinking time (less than one minute?) to fire ABMs in time. Aus and US army forces in Darwin would suffer, also some RAN vessels but China's property at Port of Darwin not so much.
Reliance would need to be placed on optical-infrared and radar satellites to Pine Gap (and other ground stations) downlink automatic robot "decision making" to send up ABMs in time.
Also Katherine RAAF base used part time by the USAF, would probably get less than 2 minutes warning time.
I'm less certain China would target Aus gas extraction and storage facilities because that may damage Australia as a major gas supplier to China and also cause international gas prices to jump significantly.
See https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/lng-enjoys-48b-bounce-on-china-recovery-20220104-p59lp0 of January 4, 2022.
"Australia has reaped lucrative gains from strong international energy prices and demand in 2021, with LNG export revenues surging by 25 per cent back close to $50 billion and China overtaking Japan as its largest customer."
Regards Pete
Hi Andrew @Aug 22, 2022, 3:06:00 PM
ReplyDeleteYes China seemed to miscalculate in a facing losing way in late May 2022 when:
"China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, launched a 10-day tour of the Pacific Islands. Almost immediately, news broke that Wang had unexpectedly proposed a sweeping multilateral agreement to deepen Beijing’s security and economic ties with the region, then quickly withdrew it due to lack of support from the Pacific Island countries...." More at
https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/06/four-takeaways-chinas-tour-pacific-islands
Penny Wong (who speaks Malay-Indonesian and all) seems so much more relaxed and effective than her predecessor Marise Payne - although Payne had to put up with ScoMo's grandstanding. Wong may one day surpass Julie Bishop's high standard.
Cheers Pete