Thailand Probes Dawei Gas Conduit

BANGKOK - Thailand’s state oil and gas company PTT and electricity distributor EGAT are investigating the feasibility of building a large liquid natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal on Myanmar’s southeast coast near Dawei.

The terminal would reformat LNG, shipped from the Middle East, to pump by pipeline into Thailand, reports said. Pipelines currently pumping gas to Thailand from production fields in the Andaman Sea come ashore near Dawei.

The terminal would need to have an annual processing capacity of 5 million tons, PTT’s chief operating officer Nuttachat Charuchinda told Reuters.

YANGON — Myanmar and India were putting the finishing touches on a major rice export deal in October which will facilitate the sale of about 20,000 metric tons of Myanmar rice into northeast India every month for the coming year.

India earlier opened bidding for a rice sales contract to supply parts of Mizoram and Manipur, two remote northeastern states that border Myanmar.

According to the Myanmar Rice Federation (MRF), Myanmar’s main independent rice industry oversight body, two Myanmar companies asking for US$800 per ton were the only bidders. The Indian government then approached the MRF to negotiate a counter offer at half the price.

U Chit Khine, chairman of the MRF, said that MRF has agreed to a sale price of $400 per ton, but that sellers will only transport the commodity to the border station, from which Indian buyers will have to arrange pick-up and transport to their local warehouses.

Myanmar sellers said that their initial prices were high because of difficult and expensive transport conditions, as well as an uncertain political atmosphere in northeast India. The area has long struggled with minority insurgencies and political upheaval that often takes the form of bandhs, a popular form of protest whereby huge territories are immediately cut off by blockading one of the region’s few main roads.

“PTT operates one LNG terminal of 5 million tons annual capacity at Map ta Phut on the [Thai] coast at the head of the Gulf of Thailand and is building a second one in the same location, due to be completed in 2017,” Asia Oil & Gas Monitor reported.

However, a receiving base on the [Myanmar] coast facing the Indian Ocean would be more convenient than shipping through the Malacca Strait at the southern tip of Malaysia, the monitor said, also quoting Nuttachat.

Myanmar gas fuels about 25 percent of Thailand’s electricity generation. –William Boot

Andaman Gas Field to Get Chinese-Built Platforms

A major Chinese state-owned oil company has been awarded a US$367 million contract to build well-head platforms for the Zawtika gas field in Myanmar’s Andaman Sea.

The contract from field operator PTT Exploration & Production, the Thai state-owned oil firm, went to China Offshore Oil Engineering Company (COOEC), said industry newspaper Upstream.

COOEC is a subsidiary of China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

The Chinese firm has been commissioned to build four platforms, and these will be constructed at COOEC’s shipyard in the southern Chinese port city of Qingdao, said Upstream.

The platforms are contracted to be completed by April 2016 and will be towed to the Zawtika field by sea.

The Chinese company “will be responsible for design, construction and offshore installation of four wellhead platforms, along with corresponding subsea pipelines,” Offshore Energy Today magazine said.

None of the work will be carried out in Myanmar.

Hsu Mon

Once the agreement is signed, Myanmar will begin legal rice exports to India for the first time. China currently takes the bulk of Myanmar's outbound rice, but cross-border rice sales between the two are still technically illegal. Chinese officials are working with MRF to establish quality control facilities and regulations, and MRF anticipates that China will soon become a long-term trade partner once they secure a legal contract. –Kyaw

Zawtika is PTTEP’s biggest gas production project outside Thailand. It has been estimated to hold at least 50 billion cubic meters of gas, 80 percent of which will be piped to Thailand under the terms of an agreement made with the former Myanmar military regime. –William Boot