The Myanmar energy authorities are deliberating to reopen six onshore oil blocks in the northern part and the delta region to foreign companies for exploration, a local news journal reported Monday.

The authorities in March 2005 announced that it would not grant onshore oil exploration by new foreign oil companies but retained them to be operated by the state-run Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE).

The authorities reserve the six blocks -- A-1, B-1, B-2, O, P and Q to foreign firms for oil and gas exploration as the MOGE is said to be unable to afford the cost of the activities in the region due to difficulties posed by dense jungle amid muddy plains, an energy official was quoted by the Myanmar Times as saying.

These blocks respectively lie in Kachin state's upper Chindwin River region and Hukaung Valley, and the Ayeyawaddy delta region.

There are seven foreign companies currently operating onshore, which include Essar Oil Ltd, Focus Energy Ltd, MPRL Exploration and Production Private Ltd, Goldpetrol, CNOOC, Sinopec Oil Company and Chinerry Assests, the report said.

Meanwhile, Myanmar has designed to raise its onshore crude oil production, starting December, to help meet the country's oil demand by drilling more test wells, an earlier report said.

The onshore oil output will be increased to 10,000 barrels from the current 9,400 barrels per day, according to the MOGE.

Myanmar yields about 20,000 barrels of oil per day from both onshore and offshore areas, which account for 40 percent of the 50, 000 barrels of diesel and petrol the country consumes per day with the rest fulfilled through import from Singapore and Malaysia, MOGE statistics show.

Besides the onshore areas, Myanmar specially has abundance of natural gas resources in the offshore areas. With three main large offshore oil and gas fields and 19 onshore ones, Myanmar has proven recoverable reserve of 18.012 trillion cubic feet (TCF) out of 89.722 TCF's estimated reserve of offshore and onshore gas, experts said.

The country is also estimated to have 3.2 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil reserve, official statistics indicate.

The Myanmar figures also show that in the fiscal year 2005-06 ending in March, the country produced 7.962 million barrels of crude oil and 11.45 billion cubic meters (BCM) of gas. Gas export during the year went to 9.138 BCM, earning over US$1 billion.

More statistics reveal that since Myanmar opened to foreign investment in late 1988, such investment in the oil and gas sector had reached US$2.635 billion as of March this year, dominating the country's foreign investment spectrally.

Foreign oil companies engaged in the oil and gas sector mainly include those from Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Indonesia, India, South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand.

(Xinhua News Agency October 23, 2006)