CAPITAL: YANGON
MONETARY UNIT: KYAT
REFINING CAPACITY: 32,000 B/CD
OIL PRODUCTION: 15,000 B/D
OIL RESERVES: 50 MILLION BBL
GAS RESERVES: 10 TCF

A large onshore oil field in Myanmar responded to initial production enhancement work and was in line for a large waterflood.

Myanmar Petroleum Resources Ltd. said Mann field also seemed ripe for subthrust, flank, and deeper pool exploration. It was interpreting reprocessed data from a 31,000-acre 3D seismic survey conducted in 1997.

Mann field, discovered in 1960, was producing 3,000 b/d of 37-40º-gravity oil, including 740 b/d of incremental production from remedial work.

An agreement to redevelop the field fell apart after other parties withdrew one by one.

MPRL operated the field under a production compensation contract with state Myanmar Oil & Gas Enterprise.

Mann field covers 4,000 acres on a 20,000-acre contract area in the central basin 350 miles north of Yangon. About 200 of the field's 648 original wells were producing in 2000. Oil reservoirs were in 26 stacked sandstones at 2,200-7,000 ft. Producing formations were Miocene Kyaukkok and Pyawbwe, Oligocene Okhmintaung, and Upper Eocene Padaung.

Mann field peaked at 24,000 b/d in 1979. Crude oil was shipped by pipeline 15 km south to the Thanbayagan refinery, which could run up to 10,000 b/d of Mann crude and as much as 25,000 b/d with refurbishment.

South Korea's Daewoo Corp. signed a production sharing contract with Myanmar Oil & Gas Enterprise for the 96,000-acre Block A-1 off northwestern Myanmar near the border with Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal.

Daewoo, with 100% working interest, was to reprocess seismic data during the first period of exploration.

Pipelines

Myanmar told a three-company international consortium to proceed with a long-delayed project to build a $200 million gas pipeline from Myanmar's largest hydrocarbon resource, Yadana gas field in the Gulf of Martaban, to an onshore location near the capital city of Rangoon.

Unocal Corp. said the government told the Yadana-to-Rangoon pipeline consortium, known as Myanmar Fertilizer Power Development Co. (MFPD), to proceed with the gas pipeline. MFPD partners were Unocal, the European energy group TotalFinaElf SA, and Mitsui & Co. of Japan.

The 20-in., 241-km gas pipeline was part of the $750 million "Three-in-One" project proposed in the mid-1990s under the overall development of Yadana gas. Aside from the gas line, the project included a 300-Mw gas-fired power station and a 1,750-tonne/day fertilizer production facility near Kyaiktaw, southwest of Rangoon.

The Yadana-Kyaiktaw gas pipeline was planned to come on stream in early 1998, delivering up to 105 MMcfd of gas from the Yadana offshore production complex to the proposed power and fertilizer plants. The gas required for the project was part of the 125 MMcfd allotted under the 30-year domestic sale agreement that the Yadana consortium signed with Myanmar in 1995.

The gas pipeline would come on stream in 3-5 years. A Yadana-to-Thailand gas pipeline started in 2000.

NGL plant

The Thai and Malaysian state oil firms were studying the viability of building a $150 million NGL separation plant in Myanmar.

The facility would extract propane and butane from natural gas piped from Yetagun, Myanmar's second-largest gas field in the Gulf of Martaban.

Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT) and Malaysian state oil firm Petronas were reviewing the feasibility of a plant capable of processing 250-300 MMcfd of gas with LPG output of 200,000-300,000 tonnes/year.

The complex would be in southern Myanmar, on the Daimensek coast in Mon state, landfall of the 210-km offshore pipeline from Yetagun field.

Part of the LPG from the proposed plant, the first of its kind in Myanmar, would be sold domestically. Some of the LPG output would be exported to neighboring countries.

PTT and Petronas planned to include Burmese state firms, including Myanmar Oil & Gas Enterprise, as partners.

PTT and Petronas said Yetagun gas was better for separation than gas from Yadana, the country's largest field. The proposed gas separation plant would add value to the Yetagun gas stream.

Petronas as a partner in the $650 million Yetagun development, which was led by Britain's Premier Oil PLC. Partners included Japan's Nippon Oil Co. and PTT Exploration & Production PLC of Thailand. Proved reserves at Yetagun had risen from an estimate of 1.1 tcf to 2.92 tcf.