The AFR has an article today indicating that Shell has sold it's stake in the Sunrise field to East Timor. The East Timor govt now has a controlling interest in the field. One comment from the article states "While Woodside has also deemed the onshore Timor option for Sunrise LNG as yielding insufficient returns,chief executive Peter Coleman in October outlined a potential way forward on the project which could see Woodside invest only in the upstream gas development part, leaving the riskier onshore LNG investment to others."
I see a number of pathways for WPL.
a) Do nothing and see what happens
b) Sell to the East Timor Govt
c) Hope that the plan that PC proposed in Oct works.
I personally favour "b". WPL, I suspect could make better use of the cash and remove a whole lot of angst and time and effort in negotiation, and let the East Timor Govt get on with it for their political reasons. Sunrise decisions will no longer be driven by commercial reality, but much more by political imperatives. This is not good news for WPL.