Australia-Indonesia border tensions resurface
Canberra's settlement with Timor Leste on the
Greater Sunrise gas field is making waves for other maritime boundary disputes
Indonesia’s long-held
resentment over Australia’s sprawling maritime claims along their ill-defined
border have spilled into the diplomatic arena following a recent settlement of
a parallel dispute in neighboring Timor Leste, also known as East Timor.
Jakarta
contends that the Timor agreement, which affects the jurisdiction of energy
reserves worth billions of dollars in the Greater Sunrise gas fields, will
nullify a 1997 treaty demarcating the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of Indonesia
and Australia.
Foreign
ministry director-general of legal affairs and international treaties Damos
Agusman said the Perth Treaty, which Indonesia has never ratified, “cannot
enter into force as it stands now as it, inter alia, covers area that
now belongs to TL [Timor Leste], and is the object of the conciliation.”
Precise
details of the Timor Leste deal have not yet been released, but it is thought
to have redrawn the border with Australia midway between the countries instead
of relying on a Joint Petroleum Development Area (JPDA) that had left the best
of the Greater Sunrise’s gas fields mostly in Australian hands. It is believed
to hold at least US$31.5 billion of energy reserves.
About 80%
of Greater Sunrise will remain in Australian territory if the border is simply
moved an equal distance between the countries, as the field is outside the
JPDA.
For Timor
Leste to benefit, the JPDA would also need to be shifted east, taking it into
Indonesian waters. Timor Leste and Indonesia have an equidistance agreement on
their own territories in the eastern region.
Indonesia
has responded as one would expect: it now wants to negotiate an equidistance
agreement with Australia that would move their border further to the south and
thus give Indonesia an 80% share of Sunrise. The coveted field is already
closer to Indonesian territory than to Australia.
The
existing border, based on a complicated series of 1972 compromises, is both
east and west of the expected new Timor Leste-Australia boundary.
Like the
original Timor agreement, it resulted from the inability of the new countries
to agree on a demarcation; a series of fruitless negotiations was set aside in
the 1980s and the de facto border became the edges of a JPDA, where royalties
from oil and gas explorations would be shared.
Operating
from a position of strength while Indonesia was rebuilding from the tumultuous
Sukarno era, Australia took advantage of now-discredited international laws on
marine boundaries that allowed signatories to use continental shelves as a
basis for delineation.
Indonesia’s
borders were pushed well north of the midway point, creating inevitable
acrimony.
In 1997,
Canberra sought a similar treaty on maritime resources above the seabed, but
was unsuccessful because a proposed zone extending 370 kilometers from
Australian shores would have created overlapping. As is customary in such
cases, a border was declared midway between the two countries.
With
separate agreements for the upper and lower seabed, Australia has continental
possessions that are a short distance from Indonesia, yet cannot prevent
Indonesian fishermen from sailing past these islands into the midway point of
the maritime border much further to the south.
The
islands of Ashmore and Cartier are only 170 kilometers below the island of
Roti, which Indonesia claims through its West Timor territory; yet they are 320
kilometers from Australia, which has claimed the islands since 1933. Moving the
border to a midway point would make them part of Indonesia.
Uninhabited
and mostly visited by Indonesian fishermen, their loss would not be felt much
in Canberra. But there are bigger concerns over the fate of Christmas Island
and the Cocos island group, both closer to Indonesia than to Australia, which
play a vital role in Canberra’s forward defense strategies.
Australian
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop quickly moved to dampen calls for the negotiation
of a permanent border, but nationalist feelings are running so high in
Indonesia that Jakarta’s hands may be tied. There is particular anger over the
disputed status of Ashmore and Cartier, which some Indonesian academics say was
controlled by the Dutch, Indonesia’s colonial masters.
Indonesia
would technically have the upper hand if the issue went to arbitration, as the
equidistance rule is now standard practice under the United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
However,
Australia withdrew from the UNCLOS tribunal and maritime jurisdiction of the
International Court of Justice to halt Timor Leste’s claims in the 1990s.
The
re-negotiation of Timor’s agreement was overseen by the Permanent Court of
Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague, an inter-governmental organization that
oversees the UNCLOS and the International Court of Justice. The PCA will hear
disputes in special tribunals if either party rejects these covenants.
Canberra
kept Timor Leste at bay for decades and could do the same to Jakarta. But this
may be only the start of Australia’s problems, as there is a fourth country
that wants a share of the oil and gas riches in the Timor Sea.
Papua New
Guinea is now keen to overturn laws dating back to the 1870s that handed many
of its maritime resources to the state government of Queensland in the era
before the British colony became part of an Australian federation.
A new
treaty was negotiated in 1978, but many inshore islands remained Australian
territory in exchange for a deal granting Papua New Guinea extended fishing
rights. One of these islands, Kussa, is just 200 meters from Papua New Guinea’s
shores at low tide, which has apparently become too close for comfort
By Alan Boyd
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