The ease of securing approvals for gas projects in East Timor compared with the escalating difficulties in Australia should help persuade Woodside Energy’s Sunrise venture to build a multibillion-dollar gas-processing plant there, the head of the nation’s petroleum company says.

The comments from Timor Gap president Antonio de Sousa came as Woodside and its partners in the Sunrise field in the Timor Sea committed to carrying out a fresh study into the viability of taking the gas to East Timor for processing, dropping their previous insistence that it must be processed in Darwin.