Woodside Energy Selling Out of Greater Sunrise Project for Up to $200 Million

By David Winning

SYDNEY--Woodside Energy is selling its stake in a large natural-gas project near East Timor for up to $200 million, a move that raises new questions over a resource discovered around 50 years ago but has yet to be developed.

Woodside on Tuesday said it has agreed to sell its 33.44% interest in the Sunrise Joint Venture, including the titles containing the Greater Sunrise fields, to East Timor's state-owned oil and gas company Timor Gap.

The decision comes nearly two months after another joint-venture partner, Japan's Osaka Gas, agreed to sell its 10% stake to Timor Gap. Concluding both deals will give Timor Gap full control of the asset.

"While Sunrise remains a high-quality resource, the transaction further simplifies Woodside's portfolio and allows capital and management attention to be focused on opportunities that present the greatest shareholder value," Woodside Chief Executive Liz Westcott said.

The Greater Sunrise project comprises the Sunrise and Troubadour gas and condensate fields, located roughly 280 miles northwest of Darwin and 90 miles south of East Timor.

Natural gas was first discovered in the Greater Sunrise project area nearly 50 years ago, but development proved difficult. Global energy producers Shell PLC and ConocoPhillips, which once sought to participate in a development, exited the project in 2019.

Some of the delays to the project revolved around technology. Woodside previously favored building a floating liquefied natural gas facility to cool gas into liquid for easier transportation, arguing it was more practical than an onshore LNG plant fed by a pipeline across a deep ocean trench to East Timor. However, that technology has since fallen out of favor across the global energy industry.

The exits of Woodside and Osaka Gas from the venture gives Timor Gap flexibility to bring in new partners. East Timor has long argued that processing the gas in the small country, the eastern half of an island about 1,300 miles east of Jakarta, Indonesia, would create jobs and support industrial development.

Pushing the project forward is critical for East Timor, which is facing a major drop in revenue as other energy fields are depleted. While the country has a large petroleum fund that it can draw on in the short term, East Timor has argued that a continued lack of progress at Greater Sunrise would make it more reliant on foreign aid.

East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta previously said that the country might consider seeking Chinese investors if a deal couldn't be struck with existing development partners to bring the gas to East Timor via a pipeline.

"Reaching alignment on the key principles underpinning a new Greater Sunrise Production Sharing Contract and associated fiscal framework in August provides an appropriate point for Woodside to sell its participating interest to Timor Gap," Woodside's Westcott said.

Woodside aims to complete the transaction in the first half of 2027.

Since becoming chief executive of Woodside in March, Westcott has moved to sell assets that have included the Calypso project in Trinidad and Tobago. This month, Woodside said it will seek to reduce its interest in the Beaumont New Ammonia project that it agreed to acquire for $2.35 billion only two years ago.

Write to David Winning at david.winning@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 26, 2026 22:08 ET (02:08 GMT)