From the time humans realized naturally occurring petroleum had myriad uses, they organized means and methods to try and collect it and utilize it to its fullest potential. The history of petroleum exploration around the world is colorful and fascinating. Each country, and even regions within countries, has its own distinct path of discovery that influences it to this day.
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Burma begins with the Indo-Burman Ranges E of the lowlands of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. This S-shaped fold belt extends 2,000 km to the S as far as the Andamans. As a physiographic barrier it has been since time immemorial an ethnographic, cultural and political boundary. Further to the E, in northernmost Burma, other mountain ranges branch off to the S abruptly from the E-W-striking fold bundles of the E Himalayas and run from the headwaters of the Irrawaddy via the Shan Plateau southwards to the Tenasserim Ranges: the Sino-Burma Ranges. |
The interest of the Geology of Burma and the importance of its mineral resources need scarcely be emphasized. In the domain of historical geology the country furnished an almost complete record of Palaeozoic and Mesozoic rocks in the Federated Shan States and of the Tertiary rocks in the Central Belt. The records, especially of the Palaeozoic periods, offering as they do an interesting comparison with their Himalayan equivalents are so replete with interest that the Federated Shan States really constitute an easily accessible field-museum of Geology. |
It is accepted that petroleum has been produced in Myanmar Naing-ngan from the central Myanmar and Rakhine areas since the early 11th century. These productions have been made exclusively from sandstone reservoirs, liberating hydrocarbons to the surface through seepages which were much later exploited by hand-dug wells. It was only in late 1980 that the first discovery and eventual exploitation of hydrocarbons from a Miocene carbonate reservoir which formed a small stratigraphic trap, was made in Htantabin Condensate Field, West of Pyi. |