Last Updated: August 2016
Overview
Map of Myanmar

- Burma (Myanmar) is an important natural gas producer in Southeast Asia, although its upstream hydrocarbons sector is severely underdeveloped. Financial constraints by Burma’s national oil company, a lack of technical capacity, opaque regulatory policy, insufficient investment by foreign firms, and international sanctions have significantly impeded the country’s efforts to realize its oil and natural gas production potential. These factors have also severely hampered the development of necessary energy infrastructure. However, U.S. and European Union sanctions were eased or suspended in 2012 and 2013 in response to political and economic reforms in Burma.
- Following the suspension of sanctions, more international companies have initiated oil and natural gas exploration efforts in Burma. The Burmese government is keen to attract foreign investment and technical assistance and, starting in 2011, has issued production-sharing contracts through direct negotiations or recent licensing rounds.
Petroleum and other liquids
- Burma’s oil industry has been underdeveloped for decades. The country produces a minimal amount of crude oil and condensates from the onshore Salin basin and offshore Yetagun field. Total liquid fuels production has gradually fallen since the 1980s to around 16,000 b/d in 2015. As part of Burma’s most recent offshore bidding rounds in 2013, the country awarded 16 onshore and 20 offshore blocks to several foreign and domestic companies. International companies have started surveys and exploration activities at over half of these blocks. Additional offshore seismic campaigns are planned for 2016 and 2017, though the extent of exploration may depend on the future price environment for oil and natural gas. The Burmese government has decided to delay launching the next offshore bidding round until at least 2017 and focus upstream development of the 20 blocks awarded in 2013.
- The country’s petroleum consumption is also small, estimated at more than 60,000 b/d in 2015, although recent economic development has driven up oil consumption, especially in the transportation sector, since 2012. Burma’s limited production and refining capacity are insufficient to meet rising domestic consumption for crude oil and petroleum products, making the country a net petroleum liquids importer.
- Burma’s economy is beginning to expand following the lifting of sanctions and energy sector reforms. According to World Bank data, gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the country is projected to increase by around 8% by 2016-2017, one of the highest growth rates in Southeast Asia. More petroleum products will be required to meet growing transportation and industrial needs.
- Burma had less than 50,000 b/d of refining capacity in 2015, and utilization rates are less than 40% as a result of aging infrastructure within the country’s three small state-owned refineries. Burma approved the construction of a 100,000-b/d refinery by China’s Guangdong Zhenrong Energy Company in early 2016, one of the largest foreign investments in the country to date. This facility is designed to supply both domestic and export markets with oil products.
Natural gas
- Burma’s natural gas production has risen substantially in the past few years, from about 450 billion cubic feet (Bcf) in 2012 to 692 Bcf in 2015. Most of the country’s current natural gas output comes from four offshore basins off the country’s west coast: the Yadana, Yetagun, and Zawtika fields in the Moattama basin, and the Shwe field in the Rakhine Basin. Burma’s natural gas production is forecasted to rise as new offshore projects come online. In early 2016, the state-run Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) and Australian stakeholder Woodside Energy announced the discovery of two large natural gas wells at opposite ends of the Rakhine Basin.
- Burma’s natural gas consumption has historically lagged behind production levels, but the country’s recent economic development has sparked growth in consumption, which reached around 140 Bcf in 2014. In anticipation of greater local gas demand for the power, fertilizer, and transportation industries, MOGE can opt to retain a production percentage from any new project for use in the domestic market. The Burmese government is also seeking international investment in liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects to help meet export obligations and growing domestic demand over the next several years.
- Most of Burma’s natural gas production is exported to Thailand and, more recently, to China. Natural gas exports to Thailand, which accounted for roughly three-quarters of Burma’s natural gas exports, totaled around 340 Bcf/y in 2015. Natural gas exports to Thailand are supplied from the Yetagun, Yadan, and Zawtika gas fields. The Zawtika project is the newest of Burma’s major offshore gas projects, with Thailand’s PTTEP launching commercial operations in the second half of 2014. The project exports natural gas to Thailand and also serves Burma’s growing domestic market.
- Natural gas exports to China commenced in mid-2013 with the development of the first phase of the Shwe natural gas project in the Rakhine Basin. In 2015, the Shwe field produced over 182 Bcf of natural gas, and Burma exported about 138 Bcf of natural gas to China by pipeline in the same year.
- Burma and China recently constructed twin crude oil and gas pipelines running from Burma’s port of Kyaukphyu to Kunming in southwestern China. A consortium of Asian oil companies, including the China National Petroleum Corporation, commissioned the onshore natural gas pipeline with a capacity of 424 Bcf/y in 2013 to carry exported gas from the Shwe gas project to China. The crude oil pipeline, holding a capacity of 440,000 b/d, allows China to diversify transit routes for its crude oil imports from the Middle East and Africa, avoiding the Strait of Malacca. This pipeline commenced operations in January 2015, and most of the crude oil is expected to serve the Yunnan refinery project in China. However, the refinery has encountered delays and environmental protests, and is not expected to be operational before 2017. The delays could limit the amount of oil offtake from the pipeline in the short term.
Electricity
- Burma relies heavily on hydropower for its electricity generation (making up 72% of power production in 2014), yet the country has abundant hydropower resources that remain undeveloped. The country possesses over 46 GW of potential installed capacity from 92 possible hydropower projects, according to Burmese government estimates. Natural gas and coal accounted for 23% and 5% of the country’s power generation, respectively.
- Currently, the electricity sector fails to meet the country’s needs. Roughly 32% of the total population and 18% of the rural population had access to electricity in 2013, according to IEA estimates. In addition, aging power plants and poor electricity transmission infrastructure cause severe power shortages, especially during the dry season when hydropower is in low supply. Consequently, traditional biomass and waste (typically consisting of wood, charcoal, manure, and crop residues) is widely utilized, especially in the rural areas, and accounts for about 65% of Burma’s primary energy consumption.
- In 2014, the Burmese Government released its National Electrification Plan, with the goal of providing electricity access to all households by the year 2030. The plan aims to expand the national grid and develop off-grid electrification for remote communities by means of mini-grid and renewable energy technologies.
- The country’s insufficient electricity generation has prompted efforts by the government to attract investment in hydroelectric, natural gas, and coal-fired electric capacity, to improve grid reliability, and to promote demand management. However, hydropower and coal-fired power plants are facing delays from local opposition, and gas-fired generation is dependent on the country’s future domestic gas production and potential LNG developments, posing challenges to the country’s electricity growth.
- Burma’s new Electricity Law passed in 2014 allows for more participation by foreign and private companies in both generation and distribution of electricity in the country. Also, the government announced that it will address some of the infrastructure issues by raising electricity tariffs for all consumers above a certain demand threshold, in effect increasing revenues that can be used for investment in system modernization.
- A joint venture between Burma’s U Energy Tharketa Power Co. Ltd. and China’s Union Resources and Engineering Company will develop the country’s largest power plant. The gas-fired plant, which will add an additional 106 MW of supply, is scheduled for completion in early 2018 and is the first phase of a 500-MW capacity project.
Project Feedback
Read what others are saying about this project.
06/20/2017 - Norway
Your reports are well structured and accessible. EIA is a very valuable source for my research.
06/20/2017 - Belgium
No doubt, your country analyses are key to our monitoring of country risks, and I expect them to be more and more useful in an energy transition context.
06/19/2017 - Hong Kong
This is exceedingly helpful, I cannot do without these analyses. The references are particularly useful in further understanding of the issues.
06/19/2017 - Argentina
I belong to an ngo dealing with energy policies in Argentina, and their connections with the international public policies and energy markets. Your information is very useful for me. THANKS
06/19/2017 - North Carolina, United States
I am a former U.S. State Department official now teaching energy courses at the university level. The EIA products are highly reliable and up-to-date.
06/19/2017 - Turkey
I am a high-ranking Govt. official dealing with international relations and diplomacy. I have been resorting to your data for more than 10 years. It provides to me useful background for the structure and developments in the energy sector, both on country basis and on global scope. Useful and helpful data for my work. Thanks sincerely.
05/17/2017 - Argentina
It keeps me updated. Very useful information.
05/17/2017 - Denmark
The info provided regularly by the EIA is of very good quality and of high value, thanks.
04/16/2017 - United Kingdom
I am using the total electricity net consumption of U.S. But I am confused the description of the data. i.e. What is the net consumption means? Is it seasonally adjusted data? Thanks!
01/18/2017 - District of Columbia, United States
Clicking on the first graphic on this page zooms in way too much (the height of the graphic is 3x the size of the pop-up) and only the vertical scroll bar works. http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/regions-topics.cfm?RegionTopicID=CSR#
12/19/2016 - China
Where can I find the previous function that could enable to view and download selected data in tables ? Thanks.
12/06/2016 - Spain
Excelent work. A few suggestions regarding CO2 emissions: - 2012 data for Argentina, Brazil and India (at least) are missing... - there is a strange jump in Germany data between 2009 and 2010 Thanks again
12/01/2016 - Italy
First of all, congrats for this huge and helpful dataset!Secondly, how can I recover the data for Biodiesel production and see them in the chart/table? The Source button seem not to do any changes.. Thanks a lot again
11/28/2016 - Colombia
It would be easier, if when using metric units, instead of writing "billion kWh" you would specify whether this is 10^9 (as in english speaking countries) or 10^12 (everywhere else). Am I correct to assume 1 billion kW equal 1 GW?
11/19/2016 - Missouri, United States
International energy - consumption per capita years 2010 and 2011 seem wildly out of line with the previous years. US goes for 308 to 69,595 in 2010? Seems incorrect
11/11/2016 - Indiana, United States
I very much liked the previous version where excel downloaded data was much easier to work with. With this new version and the way it generates excel files when we download data, it takes me a huge amount of time to effectively use a downloaded file.
11/11/2016 - Virginia, United States
Per capita consumption data for 2011 by continent is coming up strangely. For global consumption of 529 Quad BTUs, it's showing per capita 9.5 trillion BTUs (which would assume a world pop. ~56,000).
11/02/2016 - India
Hi, great work with the interface. However, there are parts of the database that we could access in the previous version, that we are unable to access here (Imports and exports of petroleum crude and products, consumption of renewable energy in QTBTU among others). It would be great if these issues were cleared up asap so as to improve usability and access to data. Thank you!
10/24/2016 - India
Hi, We are unable to download crude oil and refined petroleum products imports by country. Kindly help.
10/13/2016 - Iran
Can you please create new links for your new things? I just saved a link for total renewable electricity net consumption, every time I just use this link address, but this time because of your update, it was not found. It makes me confused, I need this data in excel format, I search all of your website, I did not find this variable data/
10/11/2016 - New York, United States
The old system to download data was much easier - why fix something that worked well. I saw a comment that person can download all countries - I can not find that. Can you please direct me to it - thanks
10/01/2016 - Texas, United States
I'm just curious why the data period ends at 2013 - it's now Oct 2016 - seems like there should be data at least thru 2015. Has the beta site been replaced? Am I just in the wrong place?
09/28/2016 - Japan
I'm using the data for elec. generation (e.g. PV or wind) for my own research. Before this version, the data were down to 3 to 4 decimal places. However, only 1 decimal seems to be shown in Beta. It would be more useful and helpful for research if some options for more decimal place were added or units could be modified (e.g. other than billion kWh for generation). Thanks.
09/13/2016 - Norway
Hi, this gives me a very interesting picture of the global energy sector. Thank you.
08/29/2016 - Texas, United States
The organization of downloaded CSV data makes the data almost unusable. All headers for each country are shown as having equal value to the country itself so the data cannot be sorted without losing the country identification. I downloaded All Countries>Crude Oil and Lease Condensate Production. Column B makes every heading equal i.e., the country and various information headings. It is unfortunate that a download cannot be directly used but it is frustrating that as an expert Excel user I cannot easily determine a way to organize the data in a way that makes it usable. Thanks, Art Berman
08/16/2016 - Texas, United States
Really helpful and easy to use.
08/12/2016 - United Kingdom
Excellent. This is much easier to navigate and use.
07/27/2016 - Brazil
Excelent job! What does the "other liquids" in Total Petroleum and Other Liquids Production 2015 include?
07/18/2016 - India
Very useful data. However, it would be great if you could mention how much of India's energy (especially oil and gas) imports come by sea, in order to get a clearer picture of India's energy imports.
06/23/2016 - United Kingdom
I was using your import figures for china i.e. the pie chart for percentage world wide imports 2014 and when added up it is 99% rather than 100.
06/22/2016 - Japan
More new information will be helpful to understand global enegy situation.
06/15/2016 - Ecuador
Srs, I am probably one of the thousands readers that are eager to learn of the new information produced by EIA. Excellent, by the way. OPEC report on revenue is very informative. Our governments always keep us in the dark. Why???. Thank you
06/07/2016 - United Kingdom
Amazing data, thank you very much!
05/25/2016 - China
Very helpful information!! Well researched, clear figures and graphs.
05/18/2016 - California, United States
There is no data available for the petroleum or natural gas reserves in the U.S.A.
05/01/2016 - Australia
It is incredibly frustrating trying to view the data you want. Today I simply want to view the imports of crude oil in bbld in South Africa. BTU is a completely unhelpful metric.
04/22/2016 - California, United States
2014?? Where are the production numbers of 2015 and up 4/22/16?
04/03/2016 - United Kingdom
Fantastic resource. Very well researched, clear and easy figures and graphs. Well organised too. Incredible useful!
03/08/2016 - District of Columbia, United States
What a handy tool, thanks!
03/06/2016 - New Jersey, United States
Well organized information with easy access.
02/15/2016 - West Virginia, United States
Very helpful information!
02/14/2016 - China
I like the old version which had a country brief.
02/09/2016 - Saudi Arabia
Excellent work for the country analysis. However, i'm struggling to cite the South African country analysis report....would appreciate if you could sent it
01/30/2016 - Spain
Your website is very useful for me as a teacher, particularly the world thematic maps. My students like it as well. Thanks a lot!
01/22/2016 - Vietnam
Useful data for my work. Thanks sincerely.
01/04/2016 - Canada
Best government website ever
01/02/2016 - Turkey
Goood
12/29/2015 - Michigan, United States
We use your 'Total Electricity Net Consumption' data for comparing countries for a market potential index we create each year. Data in the previous years was available up to 5 decimal places. However, data is available with only 1 decimal place this year (through the beta interface) and comparing countries became a challenge because there are too many countries with the same values now. Is there a way to download the full data-set with all the decimal points available?
12/22/2015 - United Kingdom
Brilliant bit of website, made my life a thousand times easier!
12/06/2015 - Argentina
Excellent!!
11/29/2015 - Malaysia
May I know if there is a latest write up on Malaysia year 2015. The one I have obtained is 2014.
11/21/2015 - Virginia, United States
Terrific article on Brazil...thank you.
11/20/2015 - Egypt
I note that the analysis of energy in Israel in this site is not covered in details as other countries?
11/17/2015 - Michigan, United States
Great PDF file on Canada's energy and trade success! Exactly what I needed to bring me up to speed for my research on Michigan and on the Midwest - thanks! (Mike at McGuire Research)
11/15/2015 - California, United States
Why are your maps so hard to copy and past? It should be easy to get a nice graph of yours.
11/12/2015 - Alabama, United States
I work with Excel spreadsheets. I looked at your Excel download function and examined your Excel spreadsheet. It appears that if I am going to load the data into my spreadsheets, I will have to do one line at a time, each country individualy.
10/06/2015 - United Kingdom
The analysis on South Korea was a very interesting and worthwhile read. Great to see such an informed analysis presented with tables to illustrate it
09/30/2015 - France
Excellent interface, very very efficient. Having global data is definitely a plus. Too bad data goes up to 2012 and does not include 2013 and 2014. Comments coming from an IT manager used to major systems with large databases.
09/12/2015 - India
I always rely on data published by EIA to make various comparisons and analysis reports. This tool makes my job much easier.
09/11/2015 - Russia
Amazing tool, thank you for such a useful application for data export .
08/16/2015 - Colorado, United States
So... Pretty! Really appreciate you guys going the extra mile with your data tools, this makes my research so much more effective. You guys have been an utter joy to work with (not a typical experience for government bureaucracy), and this new beta is the icing on the cake. Thanks for the hard work you have put in to make this information clear and understandable! Looking forward to seeing what you guys cook up in the future.
06/09/2015 - District of Columbia, United States
Why can't I download any of this to spreadsheets? Why can't I download multiple years?
06/01/2015 - Nigeria
Dear Sirs, I have been using your data for almost 20 yrs, in particular the international Petroleum data. I like the granularity provided, by country by month. Unfortunately it seems from the beta site, that I can only access the annual data and only download as a CSV file. Is that correct? regards Casper
05/31/2015 - Virginia, United States
Where are the country pages!!!? I am writing a book chapter and referenced your site, where I found terrific info on India and Japan several months ago. Unfortunately, it appears you deleted those pages. Why?
05/27/2015 - Antarctica
I really love this beautiful webpage! It is very wonderful:) I love learning about this stuff!
05/25/2015 -
I need to access country profiles in .pdf form.
05/20/2015 - New York, United States
Thank you for all the info and help over the past few years. Before the layout, I was able to find annual #s of net exports of petro for each country, and now I have no idea where it is.
05/20/2015 - New York, United States
I am looking for bbl and bcf , not Btu , can you tell me where to look for country's oil bbl and gas in bcf? Thanks
05/20/2015 - Canada
Where can I find the original spreadsheets with the country data for Crude + Condensate and the one for all liquids. The new look is too complicated for me. The spreadsheet is more easily used for good analysis.
05/19/2015 - Texas, United States
Would like a link to the pdf of the entire country analysis brief.