Myanmar regime confirms massive new gas find

Myanmar’s regime has announced the discovery of four new offshore gas fields, including blocks in the Ayeyarwady and Tanintharyi reserves, as it scrambles to secure foreign revenue.

The new fields are estimated to hold a combined 109 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of natural gas, according to the regime’s Ministry of Information (MOI).

While the MOI did not mention the new sites’ names, it stated that the largest is located in the Tanintharyi deep-sea zone and holds an estimated 95 TCF at 90 percent probability. It added that the new Ayeyarwady field contains up to 14 TCF at 100 percent probability.

Last December, BBC News Burmese reported the discovery of an estimated 94.6 TCF in Block M15 of the Tanintharyi gas field, making it potentially one of the largest reserves in the world. The regime’s announcement on Monday almost certainly includes Block M15, which covers an area of over 13,000 square kilometers near Kadan Island off the southern Tanintharyi coast in the Andaman Sea.

The Singapore-based Canadian Foresight Group (CFG) won the bidding for the block and signed a product-sharing contract with regime’s Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) on March 30, 2015, during President Thein Sein’s administration,

Citing an internal 2017 CFG report, BBC Burmese noted the project has potential to generate revenue equivalent to 40 percent of Myanmar’s total foreign currency earnings. CFG estimated the block’s gas reserves at nearly $280 billion, based on market prices at the time, according to the report.

The CFG is led by Songning Shen, a Canadian citizen of Chinese descent.

The Irrawaddy contacted the Ministry of Electricity and Energy, as well as the Ayeyarwady and Tanintharyi region administrations, for information about the new gas project, but received no reply.

Last year, MOGE and Thailand’s Gulf Petroleum Myanmar (GPM) signed Myanmar’s first production-sharing contract for offshore natural gas production since the 2021 coup. The contract for the Min Ye Thu project (Block M10) in the Mottama Gulf was inked in Naypyitaw on May 30, 2025 as Myanmar’s seventh major gas venture, joining Yadana, Yetagun, Zawtika, Shwe and two other small projects.

The regime claims that the projects are supporting the national economy through electricity generation, fertilizer production and industrial manufacturing.

However, MOGE—the regime’s single largest source of foreign currency—was sanctioned by the European Union and the United States, in 2022 and 2023 respectively, for funding a Myanmar military committing atrocities against its own people.

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GPM is a subsidiary of Thailand’s Northern Gulf Petroleum, which has partnered with prominent regime crony Kyaw Kyaw Hlaing and his SMART Group of Companies. SMART Group was established under a previous military dictatorship to serve the military-controlled petroleum industry.

GPM took over the Yetagun gas project in 2022 following the exit of Malaysia’s state-owned oil giant Petronas. The company expects to begin commercial extraction of natural gas at the Min Ye Thu block by 2028.

Rights watchdog Justice For Myanmar (JFM) revealed that GPM’s parent company, Northern Gulf Petroleum, likely funnels payments to Myanmar’s military regime through its network of shell companies registered in Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands and Singapore.

The coup prompted global energy giants—including France’s Total Energies, Australia’s Woodside, and the U.S. firm Chevron—to withdraw from Myanmar over security and human rights concerns. Both Total Energies and Chevron officially abandoned the country’s largest gas asset, the Yadana project.