YANGON, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's natural gas export hit 3.5 billion U.S. dollars in the first 11 months (Oct.-Aug.) of the fiscal year 2018-2019 ending September, according to the Ministry of Commerce Wednesday.
The natural gas export during the period increased by 430 million U.S. dollars compared with the corresponding period of the previous fiscal year.
Natural gas represents one of the major export items of Myanmar and over 20 percent of the country's export earning came from the sale of natural gas.
There are several gas fields in Myanmar, of which Yadana and Yetagun were discovered in the early 1990s.
The Yadana natural gas project, located offshore in the Andaman Sea, is being carried out by the TOTAL company of France with its pipeline supplying gas to Thailand so as the Zawtika project in the gulf of Mottama.
The Shwe natural gas field, lying offshore Rakhine state, was found in 2014 and gas from the field was mainly exported to China.
According to the second five-year National Development Plan (2016-2017 to 2020-2021), the four natural gas projects are expected to collectively yield over 630 billion cubic feet of gas in 2019-2020 fiscal year.
Meanwhile, foreign investment in the oil and gas sector reached 22.42 billion U.S. dollars in 154 projects as of July 2019 since Myanmar opened to such investment in late 1988, accounting for 27.59 percent of the total and ranking the first sector in Myanmar's foreign investors' line up, according to the latest official statistics.
