The Thai PTTEP oil company will spend 200 million U.S. dollars on drilling eight more test wells at a block area off Myanmar's southern Tanintharyi coast, the local Myanmar Times reported in this week's issue.

The eight test wells will be drilled throughout this year at Block M-9 which are adjacent to the Yadana and Yedagun oil fields in the Mottama offshore areas, the report said.

The PTTEP has found natural gas deposit at a test well called Zawtika-1 (A) in the block late last year and the deposit is estimated at 2.5 trillion cubic-feet (TCF), or 70.79 billion cubic- meters (BCM), and the whole block above 8 TCF, according to earlier official report.

The PTTEP has already been engaged in five gas projects in Myanmar, mainly in the Mottama offshore areas, including those at blocks M-7, M-9, M-3, M-4 and M-11 and imports about 1 billion cubic feet of gas per day from the country.

Meanwhile, the Thai company has been reportedly negotiating with Myanmar to buy more natural gas from the country's Yetagun field off southern Tanintharyi coast.

The PTTEP also disclosed earlier that it has joined the race against China and India to buy gas from A-1 block off the Rakhine coast being developed by a consortium headed by South Korea's Daewoo International, in which Daewoo holds a 60-percent stake, while South Korea Gas Corporation 10 percent, ONGC Videsh Ltd of India 20 percent and Gas Authority of India Ltd (GAIL) 10 percent.

Myanmar has abundance of natural gas resources especially 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 billion cubic-meters (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.

Source: Xinhua