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9 January, 2006
US oil supermajor ConocoPhillips has defied both Australian and East Timorese oil and maritime workers by employing a flag of convenience ship to transport liquid natural gas from Australia to Japan. The company, which owns 64% of the Bayu-Undan gas field in the Timor Sea, was set to send it first shipment of LNG to Japanese utility customers last week from Darwin, in northern Australia.
The company has hired no Timorese or Australian crew members to work on the vessel, said the Maritime Workers Union of East Timor. ConocoPhillips had earlier ignored East Timor government initiatives to build a gas processing facility on East Timor soil for the new field, choosing instead to build a 500-kilometre pipeline to Darwin.
The Bayu-Undan field is in disputed East Timorese waters off the country’s southern coast. The Maritime Union of Australia has pledged to get East Timorese workers involved in Bayu-Undan’s new production, and both unions promise an international campaign against ConocoPhillips. This will become a topic of the newly-organised Joint ICEM-ITF Oil and Gas Trade Union Alliance.