Burma: International Oil Majors "To Keep Junta In Power"

Burma had gas reserves estimated at 19 trillion cubic feet at the end of 2006, says BP's World Review of Statistics, and this figure will have risen with more large finds in recent months. Based on current purchase prices with the state Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, those reserves are worth about US $2 billion a year for at least the next three decades. "For a brief shining moment there looked like a chance the monks and the other protesters would prevail, and there would have been - and may still be - some anxious moments in a number of petroleum boardrooms," said an industry consultant based in Bangkok who would not be named. Main foreign investors include Total (France), Petronas (Malaysia), PTTEP (Thailand), Daewoo (South Korea), onGC and GAIL (India) and China National Offshore Oil Corp. and China National Petroleum Corporation. In addition, smaller companies from Singapore, Australia and Russia are engaged in oil and gas exploration. Pushed by the European Union, Total said it would not make any new investments in Burma. Daewoo, the major stakeholder in Burma's biggest-to-date gas find, responded to the protests and repression: "Politics is politics. Economics is economics." Beijing's state companies - which have ambitions to use Burma as a transshipment conduit to move Middle East oil via a port on the Bay of Bengal up into China's Yunnan province - said nothing. The most immediate loser from regime change could be Thailand, which is currently the main gas buyer - from its own developed wells in Burmese waters off the east coast in the Gulf of Martaban, and also those operated by Malaysia's Petronas and France's Total. Thailand currently buys more than 80 per cent of Burmese gas, spending more than $1 billion a year to fuel at least one-third of its electricity generation. But analysts note that, as is so often the case, Thailand has managed to avoid the worst publicity associated with doing business with the repressive junta generals. Instead, because of their size and influence internationally, China and India have been criticized for not doing enough to persuade their recalcitrant neighbour to come to the negotiating table with opposition democracy activists. http://news.tradingcharts.com/futures/0/9/98771790.html

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