Masela

Mysteriously missing from most media reports on the controversy over how to develop the giant Masela gas field is the danger posed by a 2,000-3,000-meter-deep undersea trench, which lies between the concession and the remote Tanimbar islands in the Arafura Sea.

Part of the quake-prone Indian Ocean fault line that skirts Sumatra and Java and curls around the southern coast of eastern Indonesia's Nusa Tenggara island chain, it is one major reason why Australian firm Woodside refuses to pipe gas from its Sunrise field to Timor-Leste.