Australian company to explore oil, gas off Myanmar southern coast

An Australian company has reached a contract with Myanmar on oil and gas exploration and production in the country's Yetagun gas field off the southern Tanintharyi coast, the official newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported Saturday.

According to the production sharing contract signed on Thursday in the new capital of Nay Pyi Taw between the Danford Equities Corporation of Australia and the state-run Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise under the Ministry of Energy, the activities will be conducted at the east block of the offshore Yetagun field, the report said.

The Yetagun gas field project involves PTTEP (Thailand), Petronas (Malaysia), Nippon (Japan) and MOGE (Myanmar), of which the Petronas possesses the largest share with 56.66 percent, while Myanmar's state-run Oil and Gas Enterprise 15 percent, PTTEP of Thailand and Nippon of Japan 14.17 percent each.

The Yetagun gas reserve was set at 3.946 trillion cubic feet ( TCF) or 111.73 billion cubic-meters (BCM) with a sale reserve of 2. 437 TCF or 69 BCM.

Meanwhile, four more available blocks M-15, M-16, M-17 and M-18 off the Tanintharyi coast are under natural gas exploration with test wells being planned for drilling by the Petronas, official sources said.

The PTTEP of Thailand had increased buying of gas up to over 400 million cubic-feet (MCF) or 11.32 million cubic-meters (MCM) per day from the field last year, up from 200 MCF per day in 2000 when it first started to import the Yetagun gas which was transmitted through a 24-inch pipe extending as 273 kilometers.

In August, the PTTEP negotiated with Myanmar to increase import of gas from the Yetagun field by 100 MCF or 2.83 MCM of gas per day produced from the field.

Myanmar has abundance of natural gas resources in the offshore areas. With three main large offshore oil and gas fields and 19 onshore ones, Myanmar has proven recoverable reserve of 18.012 TCF or 510 BCM out of 89.722 TCF or 2.54 TCM's estimated reserve of offshore and onshore gas, experts said.

The country is also estimated to have 3.2 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil reserve, official statistics indicate.

The Myanmar figures also show that in the fiscal year 2005-06 which ended in March, the country produced 7.962 million barrels of crude oil and 11.45 BCM of gas. Gas export during the year went to 9.138 BCM, earning over 1 billion U.S. dollars.

More statistics reveal that since Myanmar opened to foreign investment in late 1988, such investment in the oil and gas sector had reached 2.635 billion dollars as of March this year, dominating the country's foreign investment sectorally.

Foreign oil companies engaged in the oil and gas sector mainly include those from Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Indonesia, India, South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand.

Source: Xinhua