AFTER a long wait, and several delays, Myanmar’s government will soon announce which companies have won the right to explore the bulk of its offshore oil and gas reserves. The outcome of the bidding for the 19 deep- and 11 shallow-water blocks is one of the most eagerly awaited events in the hydrocarbons industry. The competition attracted almost all the global giants, including Total, Shell, Statoil and Chevron. The winners expect to explore some of the most promising waters left in Asia, and possibly the world.Just how promising, however, is a subject of intense speculation, and not a little guesswork. Because of the long-running economic sanctions against Myanmar, introduced in the mid-1990s and only relaxed two years ago, almost no work has been done to determine the capacity of the country’s oil and gas fields, so estimates vary widely. The proven energy reserves are modest: 50m barrels of oil and 283 billion cubic metres of natural gas, the latter worth about $75 billion at today’s prices.It is the unofficial estimates that have lured the Shells and Chevrons. Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, which is state-owned, has put the reserves at 226m barrels of oil and 457 billion cubic metres of gas. Foreign oilmen agree that this could well be true. Those figures would put the Myanmar fields on a par with Britain’s North Sea before it was exploited, or Brazil’s reserves now....
from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1rFIwqu
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