De Lemos said all legislation governing oil and gas exploration should be approved by mid-July. The new laws were previously expected to have been passed late last year. Under the revised timetable, the country could award exploration licences by the second quarter.
The East Timorese government is preparing to launch an international roadshow with events in Houston, London and Singapore for the blocks in September.
This would be the first release of unambiguously East Timorese petroleum blocks. Currently, Timor Sea exploration is confined to Australian and Indonesian waters and the joint petroleum development area, where sovereignty is disputed between Australia and East Timor.
De Lemos, said several companies including Malaysia's Petronas and Woodside Petroleum Ltd had expressed interest in Timorese acreage. Norway's Statoil, Kuwait's international upstream corporation Kufpec and PetroChina had also expressed interest.
"We are offering [fiscal] terms to investors which are attractive [and] the regime is designed to be increasingly flexible and adaptive,” de Lemos told the SEAAOC delegates.
"We have dozens of oil seeps in Timor Leste – the area is almost identical to what is found in the North West Shelf."
