Malaysia’s Petronas and Thailand’s PTT Exploration & Production (PTTEP) have announced they will exit the Yetagun gas project offshore Myanmar as they rationalise their upstream portfolios. Neither company denounced the military-led coup in their exit statements.
TotalEnergies, which on 21 January announced a rapid withdrawal from Myanmar because the situation in the country no longer allowed the French company to make a “sufficiently positive contribution”, said its exit will be “responsible.”
Thailand’s PTT Exploration & Production (PTTEP) has confirmed it will take over operatorship of the Yadana gas field offshore Myanmar in July as TotalEnergies (LSE:TTE) walks away in a transaction with no commercial value.
French energy giant TotalEnergies has said it has done everything within its power for now to limit revenues going to the military junta in Myanmar while staying within a legal framework and maintaining crucial power supplies.
Total and Chevron will suspend cash distribution by a joint venture that counts a Myanmar state-owned company as a shareholder.
Activist group Justice For Myanmar, which documents military-linked financial matters in the country, has accused French major Total of making excessive profits at Myanmar’s expense.
Despite the political and social turmoil in Myanmar, South Korea’s Posco International is sending a second deep-water drilling rig to the troubled Southeast Asian state to continue development work at the Shwe gas field.
Malaysian national oil company (NOC) Petronas has declared force majeure on its Yetagun field off Myanmar, which is on the brink of civil war, due to the depletion of gas production.