A dispute between the government of East Timor and the Australian oil and gas company Woodside shows no sign of being resolved any time soon.
The two cannot agree on a location for a plant to liquefy gas from the Greater Sunrise fields in the Timor Sea.
After a trip to Dili last week, Woodside chief executive Don Voelte dismissed threats by East Timor to let the project collapse and rejected suggestions the company had failed its legal obligations.
The ABC reports both East Timor and the Northern Territory had hoped to persuade Woodside to establish an onshore site in their jurisdictions.
Mr Voelte says the offshore plan will still be worth $A13 billion each to East Timor and Australia.
He does not think the East Timorese Government will carry out its threat to break an international treaty to block the plan.
Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Paul Henderson, says other companies are likely to follow Woodside's decision to build its processing plant offshore, instead of on the Australian mainland.
Mr Henderson says the Territory and other mainland jurisdictions have to accept that it is cheaper to process offshore in many cases.
