Protest at BHP shareholders' meeting

By Jon Lamb

ADELAIDE -- A protest against BHP's theft of East Timorese oil from the Timor Gap took place outside a BHP shareholders' meeting on September 23.

Two of the main oilfields discovered by BHP in the Timor Gap, Laminaria and Corallina, have estimated reserves of 130-250 million barrels of oil. BHP is jointly developing the world's largest floating oil production vessel with Shell and Woodside Petroleum to extract it at a cost exceeding $1 billion.

BHP has made four major discoveries in the so-called Zone of Cooperation (ZOC) between Indonesia and Australia, set up when Australia and Indonesia signed the Timor Gap Treaty in 1989. Two of these discoveries, Bayu and Undan, have a huge amount of natural gas. So far, proven recoverable reserves of gas in the ZOC are equivalent to 500 million barrels of oil.

Estimates of the total amount of gas in the ZOC are equivalent to 1400-1800 million barrels of oil. By comparison, Bass Strait has oil reserves of approximately 370 million barrels.

Protesters handed leaflets to shareholders as a “Suharto” with bloodstained hands stood by saying “I help BHP get its oil!”.

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