The Timor Sea Designated Authority (TSDA) is responsible for the day-to-day management of petroleum operations in the Joint Petroleum Development Area (JPDA). On 1 July 2008 Timor-Leste's newly established National Petroleum Authority took over responsibility from the TSDA and is now the new regulatory Authority in the JPDA. The commencement of the National Petroleum Authority is a significant milestone for the Timor-Leste.
The TSDA had important responsibilities which included ensuring that the resources in the JPDA were effectively developed and the appropriate revenues to Timor-Leste and Australia Governments were paid. Other key roles included ensuring petroleum operations were conducted in an environmentally sound way and that the health and safety risks to persons offshore were properly controlled. To help the TSDA with the transition of these responsibilities into the National Petroleum Authority, a four person team from the Department worked in Dili with the TSDA staff, from February 2008 to the end of June 2008. The project was funded by AusAid
, the Australian Government agency responsible for managing Australia's overseas aid program.
Since 2006, the TSDA had been working on updating the regulations to manage petroleum activities in the JPDA. The Australian team helped TSDA staff by bringing the regulations up to modern standards. The new regulations are objective based and focussed on performance and outcomes of petroleum operations, rather than spelling out what companies have to do. This will allow regulation in the JPDA to keep up with the constant changes and improvements in technology in the offshore petroleum industry.
The TSDA also developed policies to provide guidance to operators in the JPDA on how the TSDA will administer the regulatory regime as well as policies to provide a framework for the internal regulatory and corporate governance operations of the organisation. The team worked with the TSDA to formalise the draft policies and identified gaps where new policies needed to be developed.
To be able to execute these policies in a consistent way, the team worked with TSDA staff to draft and put in place procedures to explain how the staff will carry out their day-to-day tasks and give effect to all of the policies. The corporate governance and regulatory policies and procedures will help with decision making and the training of new starters in the National Petroleum Authority.