The only company managed by Myanmar nationals and developing the biggest natural gas reserves in Southeast Asia is domiciled in BVI and run by Myanmar oilman Moe Myint. In the end of January his BVI company MPRL E & P Ltd, having overcome their international competitors, signed a deal for the rights to explore oil and gas off Myanmar’s western coast.
Oil companies started to express interest in Myanmar’s natural gas coast, after the South Korea’s consortium Daewoo announced that it had discovered and certified at least seven trillion cubic feet of natural gas in an offshore area it was exploring.
Several international companies from India, Thailand and Malaysia also wanted to receive the rights to explore the Myanmar region that included potentially vast oil and gas reserves. India has also been negotiating to build its own pipeline to Myanmar, but this remained on the level of talks.
The BVI-registered MPRL E, run by Moe Myint, has been given a six-month study period to review existing data on the Block A-6 on the Rakhine coast. Then, by the terms of the contract signed between MPRL E and the state company Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, the company should pay two million dollars for proceeding with exploration in the block.
Moe Myint registered his company MPRL E in the British Virgin Islands in 1996, and partnered with partners from the United States, Japan and Singapore, on a project to enhance production of oil and gas in central Myanmar. These partners pulled out three years later, and MPRL E took over the entire project. The new exploration contract with Myanmar government was a big step forward for the BVI company, which now employs 3 000 people and has opened regional office in Singapore.
BVI company’s owner Moe Myint believes such contracts are good for the country and its people over the long term, regardless of who is running the Myanmar government. However the financial and investment boom, in which the exploration contracts with BVI companies MPRL E and P Ltd are also included, has arisen criticism from activists who have protested the deals supporting military-rule regime which has run Burma since 1962.