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The oil and gas industry isn’t typically a refuge for beauty pageant winners. But then again Suellen Osborne, a former Miss Australia, isn’t your typical oil and gas executive. The 48-year-old is spearheading an ambitious project in a nation that has challenged some of Australia’s biggest companies: Timor-Leste.
Osborne’s company, Timor Resources, has been working for the past seven years in a joint venture with Timor Gap, the national petroleum company, to explore and develop a handful of onshore oil and gas wells on the country’s south coast in an area that spans more than 3000 square kilometres.
The project, which now wants to raise a further $US200 million ($293 million) to move towards production, offers the Timor-Leste government a chance to turn around the alarming decline in its economy’s revenue. Forecasts are that the nation, which secured its independence in 2002, could be broke within a decade.
Suellen Osborne, Timor Resources managing director. Credit: Paul Harris
Osborne, the founder and managing director of Timor Resources, says her company is the only international onshore operator of onshore oil and gas in Timor-Leste, and wants to bring into production certified reserves of 21.1 million barrels of oil equivalent.
The company and its private equity partners have already invested $US72 million into the project.
“It’s been very costly and mentally very challenging and draining, working with governments, stakeholders and investors to get this project going, but it will all be worth it in the next two years when we get oil and gas online,” says Osborne.
There have been many hurdles including a funding dispute between Timor Resources and the government-owned Timor Gap, which Osborne says is now almost resolved. More challenges lay ahead. Securing $US200 million in debt funding won’t be easy with interest rates for loans at their highest in almost a decade, and few banks and institutional investors willing to back new oil and gas projects.
However, Osborne remains undeterred. “Everyone’s saying petroleum hydrocarbon projects are finished. That’s not true. Anyone who understands the industry would recognise the need for these developments still to be carried out. To the Timorese government, it’s a project of national significance.”
She says the joint venture project may consider Chinese investment. “I said we’d make it happen – the prospectivity is not in question.”
In September, Timor-Leste’s government revealed it had upgraded its ties with China to a comprehensive strategic partnership, agreeing to co-operate under the Belt and Road Initiative that has been championed by China’s President Xi Jinping, which could open the way for infrastructure investment.
China’s President Xi Jinping meets Timor-Leste’s Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao in September.
Timor-Leste’s government is keen to develop its natural resources, of which it has plenty, and which are critical to the island nation’s economy. Its main source of revenue – the Bayu-Undan oil and gas field – has been depleted, and other offshore gas projects such as the Greater Sunrise fields have been stuck in limbo for decades, given the numerous disputes between the Timorese and Australian governments and the operator Woodside.
The latest dispute of the Greater Sunrise fields, which lie 150 kilometres from Timor-Leste, is the location of an LNG processing plant. Timor-Leste’s government wants it located on its soil and the gas piped there rather than Woodside’s preferred option of the established energy hub of Darwin.
Rick Wilkinson, chief executive of advisory firm EnergyQuest, said the drawn-out negotiations around Greater Sunrise, would make investors cautious about backing onshore oil and gas development in Timor-Leste. “If the perceived risk is higher than investors will want more security.”
But he also noted: “There’s no question that any potential for onshore development of oil and gas in East Timor is critical to the new nation.”
The transition of Timor-Leste, formerly known as East Timor, to a democracy has been troubled over the past two decades, as leader battling poverty, unemployment and corruption.
Damien Kingsbury, emeritus professor at Deakin University, who has worked in Timor-Leste extensively since the mid-1990s, says despite the challenges facing an onshore oil and gas project it has a distinct advantage.
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“The driving reason behind the desire to develop an onshore facility for an onshore field is Timor-Leste is desperate for revenue. And there’s no prospect at this stage of Greater Sunrise proceeding.”
Kingsbury said Timor-Leste’s government was expected to run out of money by about 2033 based on current expenditure rates and lack of revenue.
“The current budget proposed for next year and subsequent years, reduces spending by 18 per cent year-on-year. Now that is intended to limit government spending to address the decline in the sovereign wealth fund, the Petroleum Fund, which is overwhelmingly the principal source of money for Timor-Leste and government,” he said.
“That level of cuts to government spending will mean something like a 15 to 16 per cent reduction in the economy year-on-year. This is a country that already has 50 per cent malnutrition rate and around 40 per cent poverty rate. So cutting government spending, which drives about 85 to 90 per cent of the economy, will have a massive impact on the standard of living. They are desperate to find alternative sources of income.”
After winning the Miss Australia contest in 1998, Suellen Osborne went to work for her father, David Fuller, who had founded the private group Nepean Engineering, a company that initially supplied equipment to the mining and construction sectors, such as conveyor belts and structural steel for skyscrapers. It has since expanded to supply other industries, such as defence, medical and aerospace.
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David Fuller passed away in 2019, having handed the reins to his son Miles. During his lifetime his interests also included stakes in mining and resource companies, land developments and commercial, industrial and agricultural property.
“My father was a high net worth individual with assets in lots of different classes,” says Osborne. “He had agricultural properties. He had mining and equity interests of a large-scale right across the globe in different projects.”
Osborne says her father bought a number of agricultural properties from AMP when the insurance and funds management group was once one of the largest landowners in the country. She says her extended family now owns one of the largest private farm groups in NSW, running cattle and sheep.
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For almost three decades, Osborne has worked in the mining and resources sectors of oil, gas and gold, including in Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste, as well as in land development for her father. “My dad was determined for me to get involved in the mining and construction projects, which he allowed me to lead from very early on.”
In addition to Timor Resources, Osborne’s currently overseeing a large-scale residential land subdivision in NSW, near Tea Gardens on NSW’s mid north coast, and another in Manooka Valley, in south-western Sydney.
However, it’s Timor Resources that takes up most of her time. “I’ve been privileged to manage and operate different businesses, while focusing most of my efforts on this oil and gas play in Timor-Leste.”
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