Documents from La’o HamutukLa’o Hamutuk has been active on the Timor Sea oil and gas issue since we started in 2000.
Here are a few of our English-language relevant statements and publications. See the Bahasa Indonesia and Tetum index pages for additional material.
The La’o Hamutuk BulletinNovember 2000 editorial: Health, Wealth, Apologies and Oil: The East Timor-Australia Connection August 2001: editorial: Phillips Petroleum and Canberra Play an Old Game May 2002: Special Independence Issue on the history and the legal issues relating to boundaries. PDF July 2002: potential negative effects of the oil industry, and companies. PDF August 2002: report from the SEAAOC petroleum industry conference in Darwin. PDF October 2002: reprinted our July 2002 Submission to the Australian Parliament. December 2002: Chronology of Timor Sea oil and gas developments from 1893 to the present. The previous five articles are in one 28-page printable PDF compilation. August 2003: Update on many aspects of Timor Sea developments. PDF January 2004: Banking and Payments Authority, Oil Money Requires Good Management. PDF March 2004: Financial Deficit, Australia's Distortions, Oilwatch SE Asia. PDF October 2004: Nigeria Exchange and Resource Curse. PDF Also editorial reprint: Can East Timor Avoid the Resource Curse? November 2005: Timor-Leste will be one of the most Petroleum-Dependent Countries in the World. Also Timor-Leste Establishes Leaky Petroleum Regime and editorial Australian Aid Should Not Restrict Free Speech. PDF April 2006: The CMATS Treaty (including Glossary, Timeline), Response by Prime Minister and commentary from La'o Hamutuk. PDF March 2007: Timor-Leste's Petroleum Fund (including Glossary, Comparison with Norway), Report from the Oilwatch Forum, Public meeting on CMATS. PDF June 2007: Restructuring petroleum regulation, CMATS ratification, Political parties debate petroleum revenue management. PDF September 2007: Proposed changes in petroleum regulation, Gareth Evans refuses to apologize, Timor-Leste Local Content. PDF
Adriano do Nascimento of La’o Hamutuk's staff wrote several articles for East Timorese newspapers on oil and gas issues: At this point we only have them in Indonesian. La’o Hamutuk Submission to Australian Parliament on Timor Sea Treaty, July 2002. La’o Hamutuk Submission to Australian Parliament on Sunrise Unitization, March 2003. La’o Hamutuk Statement to the Development Partners meeting, December 2003. Can Timor Leste Avoid the Resource Curse? by Charles Scheiner, La'o Hamutuk. PowerPoint Tetum PowerPoint. TAG Workshop, Dili, March 2004. The Case for Saving Sunrise. La'o Hamutuk, July 2004. La'o Hamutuk Submission to the RDTL Timor Sea Office regarding the draft Petroleum Regime, September 2004. Portuguese La'o Hamutuk Submission to the RDTL Ministry of Planning and Finances regarding the Petroleum Fund discussion paper (PDF), December 2004. Portuguese La'o Hamutuk Submission to the RDTL Ministry of Planning and Finances regarding the Petroleum Fund Draft Law (PDF), March 2005. Portuguese La'o Hamutuk Comment on Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative to UK EITI Conference in London, 17 March 2005. PDF Oil in Timor-Leste: An exploration of economic, ecological and moral debt, September 2005. Timor-Leste demonstrates solidarity with Burma over pipeline, October 2005La'o Hamutuk press release on the CMATS Treaty, January 2006. Timor-Leste and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative: An Overview from Civil Society presented by La'o Hamutuk and Luta Hamutuk to the EITI Conference in Oslo, October 2006 Petroleum in Timor-Leste presented by La’o Hamutuk to the International Forum on Petroleum, Human Rights and Environmental Reparation, El Coca, Ecuador, October 2006 Sunrise LNG in Timor-Leste: Dreams, Realities and Challenges. La'o Hamutuk, February 2008
Including Tetum summary, Powerpoint in English and Tetum, and PDF versions.
La’o Hamutuk works closely with the OilWatch network, a global coalition of organizations in tropical forest countries who work to counter the negative environmental, social and economic effects of the oil and gas industry. In late may, two OilWatch activists from Sri Lanka and Nigeria visited East Timor, and La’o Hamutuk organized a public meeting where they made a presentation. We summarized it in our July 2002 Bulletin. One of OilWatch's key Nigerian activists, Nnimmo Bassey, wrote a poem "We Thought it was Oil, but it was Blood." | 
