State-owned Indian Oil Corporation has submitted a bid to enter the fuel retailing market in Myanmar, the Business Standard newspaper reported on September 3.
“We have submitted a bid to start retail outlets and also set up LPG plants in Myanmar,” Mr Anish Aggarwal, director (pipelines) at IOC, India’s biggest state-owned refinery operator, told the New Delhi-based newspaper.
The report said state-owned Myanma Petroleum Products Enterprise had last year invited private companies to form a joint venture for importing, storing, distributing and selling all petroleum products.
A report in April said the joint venture agreement would be for 30 years, with the possibility of two 10-year extensions, with MPPE holding a 51 percent share.
IOC is the second Indian state-owned refining company to express interest in entering the fuel market in Myanmar in recent weeks.
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The Numaligarh Refinery at Morangi in Assam was in talks with the Myanmar government to export up to 500,000 tonnes of petrol a year, Bloomberg reported on August 18.
The facility is a subsidiary of India’s second-biggest state-owned refiner, Bharat Petroleum Corp.
The Bloomberg report quoted London-based BMI Research as saying Myanmar imported more than 60 percent of its refined fuel and three domestic refineries capable of producing 57,000 barrels a day operated at 30 percent capacity in 2015.
BMI Research estimated that fuel consumption in Myanmar would expand at an average of six percent a year between 2016 and 2020, outpacing Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.
