An oil company based in the British Virgin Island has reached a production sharing contract with Myanmar to explore and produce oil and natural gas in an offshore area of the country, the official newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported Sunday.

According to the contract signed in the new capital of Nay Pyi Taw recently between the MRPL E and P Pte Ltd and the state-run Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) under the Ministry of Energy, the activities will be carried out at Block A-6 off the western Rakhine coast, the report said.

Other reports said the block, which covers an area of about 9, 830 square-kilometers, is located south of the gas fields operated by South Korea's Daewoo.

The MPRL company, which is also based in Singapore, has been involved in similar activities at the onshore Mann Oil Field in Myanmar's central Magway division since 1997. So far, it has injected a total of 84 million U.S. dollars under a performance compensation contract with the MOGE.

There have been a number of foreign oil companies exploring gas in the Rakhine offshore area in recent years. These companies include a consortium, led by South Korea's Daewoo International Corporation with 60-percent stake. Other companies go to South Korea Gas Corporation, ONGC Videsh Ltd of India and Gas Authority of India Ltd (GAIL).

The consortium has found gas deposits at Block A-1 (Shwe field and the Shwephyu field) and Block A-3 (Mya field) off the Rakhine coast in January 2004 and April 2005 respectively.

The Shwe field holds a gas reserve of 4 to 6 trillion cubic feet (TCF) or 113.2 to 170 billion cubic-meters (BCM), while the Shwephyu 5 TCF and the Mya 2 TCF with a combined proven reserve of 5.7 to 10 TCF being estimated by experts.

In December last year, the GAIL of India and the Silver Wave Energy of Singapore signed a contract with the MOGE to conduct oil and gas exploration and production at Block A-7, which is also in the Rakhine offshore area.

Earlier this month, the China National Petroleum Corporation ( CNPC) International Ltd of China and the MOGE also signed contracts to explore oil and gas at three deep-sea blocks AD-1, AD- 6 and AD-8 off the same Rakhine coast which cover a total area of about 10,000 square-kilometers.

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 trillion cubic-meters (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.

Available statistics reveal that such investment in Myanmar's oil and gas sector had reached 2.635 billion dollars as of March, the end of the fiscal year 2005-06, since the country opened to foreign investment in late 1988, dominating the country's foreign investment sectorally.

Source: Xinhua