Singapore | East Timor has upped the stakes in a decades-long stand-off with an Australian company by suggesting it could approach China to build a pipeline to transfer gas extracted from the Greater Sunrise field, located 450km from Darwin.

The government of East Timor wants gas piped to its undeveloped south coast and holds a majority stake in Greater Sunrise through the state-owned company Timor Gap.* Its equity partner and would-be project operator, Woodside Energy, maintains that a pipeline to Darwin is the only commercially viable option.