Oil and gas industry in Myanmar
[2] Decades of isolation, sanctions, a lack of technical capacity, opaque government policies and insufficient investment has impeded the country's efforts to develop an upstream hydrocarbon sector.
[3] Recent but slow political reform has led the international community to ease sanctions on Burma, giving rise to hopes of greater investment and economic growth.
In 2015-2016, the petroleum industry attracted the highest-ever amount (USD 4.8 billion) of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the history of Myanmar.
[9] The longest of these pipelines began pre-construction in 2004, and construction in 2008 between China National Petroleum Corporation and Daewoo International to connect the Shwe gas field to Chinese markets.
The industry consists of three key state players:[2] Major international oil companies (IOCs) engaged in Myanmar include TotalEnergies, the Essar Group, CNOOC, PTTEP, Petronas and Sinopec.
[15] After some of the sanctions were lifted in 2012, many international investors such as for instance British Gas, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ENI, Oil India, Ophir, PetroVietnam, Shell, Statoil, and Woodside entered Myanmar's petroleum market.
According to Kwong Weng Yap, Chief Operating Officer of Parami, he said in a speech to the ASEAN community that the Myanmar oil and gas industry requires a clean government and local inclusion for it to be sustainable in the near term.
The natural gas on shore extraction sites have been areas of continued human rights violations against local ethnic groups.
An extensive report by the Shwe Gas Movement (SGM), a Burmese community-based human rights network, documented the destruction of local fishing and farming industries, including confiscation of thousands of acres of land to "clear areas for the pipeline and associated infrastructure", from 2010 to 2011.
In 4 February 2021, French oil multinational TotalEnergies (known as Total S.A. at the time) announced it was reviewing the impact of the coup on its domestic operations and projects.
