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PTT plans first Myanmar retail fuel station
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
THAILAND’S state-owned PTT has announced plans to open its first retail fuel station in Myan- mar and aims to do so early next year.
PTT Oil and Retail Business’ vice-president, Buranin Rattanasombat, said the first branded station was slated to open before the second quarter of 2020. The company will form a joint venture with locally owned KBZ Group to set up the station. The two companies will also build an oil product and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) storage facility that will include a storage depot, logistics port and gas packing factory. Work on the hub, which will be able to store up to 1mn barrels of oil and 4,500 tonnes of LPG, is slated for completion within a year.
opened 300 branded stations in Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines.
Despite state-owned Myanmar Petrochem- ical Enterprise (MPE) having revealed in April 2018 that it intended to build a new 2mn tonne per year (40,000 barrel per day) refinery near an existing facility in the Magwe Region there has been little to no progress on the project. This is likely owing to the fact that it is harder to find strategic partners for such small-scale developments.
At the same time, despite liberalising the retail fuel sector in 2017 to allow foreign inves- tors to enter, few foreign companies have show much interest in the country’s midstream.
Myanmar Times quoted Rattanasombat as
saying on October 21 that the company wanted
the project to serve as a “fuel storage centre to
handle the delivery and quality control of PTT
products that will come by sea from Singapore
andbylandfromThailand”. ReutersreportedinMaythatPetroChinawas
Rattanasombat added that his company mulling over a plan to open “dozens” of fuel sta- was shifting its focus to Myanmar after having tions in the country.
PTT is only the second foreign player, after state-run PetroChina, to enter the space. The Chinese major opened its first fuel station in Myanmar in March in partnership with Shwe Taung Energy.
Philippines, Russia discuss South China Sea exploration
POLICY
THE Philippine government last week wel- comed a delegation sent by Russia’s state-run Rosneft to discuss the possibility of jointly exploring the waters offshore the South-East Asian country.
Russia’s Ambassador to the Philippines Igor Khovaev told reporters on October 22 that the Russian developer was “very interested” in estab- lishing a partnership with the Philippines.
“A group of experts was sent by Rosneft to Manila to discuss it, to start discussing possible co-operation in this field,” the diplomat said. He added that delegation was “probably still in Manila”.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte met Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin in Moscow on October 2 and asked the oil executive to apply for a service contract with the Philip- pine Department of Energy (DOE), Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi told local new outlet Rappler on October 9.
Deepening upstream ties with the Russian com- pany have been welcomed by Supreme Court Jus- tice Antonio Carpio, who told Rappler on October 19 that joint participation in the country’s offshore should not be limited to China.
“Yes, I would welcome the participation of Rosneft.... because we should be spreading our
service contracts. We should have one, or maybe several with China, some with the Western countries, including Russia,” Carpio said.
The comments come as the two countries try to reach a middle ground on exploring waters that both claim sovereignty over.
Duterte has said the Chinese government has urged him to set aside a ruling by The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) 2016 that dismissed most of China’s claims as invalid. In return, Beijing has allegedgly said it will split any discoveries 60:40 in the Philippines’ favour. The Chinese government has neither confirmed nor denied Duterte’s assertions.
The US is a stern critic of Chinese efforts to secure its claim to more than 90% of the South China Sea via its nine-dash line. US Depart- ment of State official David Stilwell told a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee panel on October 16 that China was preventing ASEAN members from exploiting the region’s potential energy reserves. He said: “Through repeated provocative actions to assert the nine-dashed line, Beijing is inhibiting ASEAN members from accessing over $2.5tn in recoverable energy reserves, while contributing to instability and the risk of conflict.”
Week 42 23•October•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P5
