Agio Pereira, the interim Minister of Oil and Mineral Resources, made the announcement at the 4th International Conference on Geoscience in Dili on Tuesday according to Macau hub.  The conference is running under the theme “Geological data and information for the diversification of the economy.”

The announcement comes as Timor-Leste’s first onshore seismic campaigns since independence started earlier this month at two new petroleum sites on the south coast.

The two sites were awarded in April 2017 as a 50:50 joint venture with Timor Gap Onshore Block, a subsidiary of Timor Gap, and Timor Resources Pty Ltd, of Australia’s Nepean Group.

Suellen Osborne, the Managing Director of Timor Resources, told Upstream News that the onshore oil and gas potential of Timor-Leste had “long been recognised but remained largely untapped and under-explored due to historic geopolitical issues.”

“We are delighted to be the first independent company in over 40 years to carry out exploration here on this land. There is definitely oil present in these onshore permits, it’s a question of how much oil there is and whether the discoveries made will be commercial,” she said.