Licensed and available exploration acreage offshore Myanmar covers an area of c. 178 969 km2 which is equivalent to the total area of the North Sea. The main offshore regions defined by Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) are the Rakhine, Moattama and Tanintharyi regions with areas of 170 000, 140 000 and 156 000 km2 respectively, each of which has been subdivided into a number of licence blocks by MOGE as shown in Figure 6.1. It is these block numbers to which we frequently refer when discussing the petroleum geology in the following chapters. The deep-water Neogene offshore and the Middle Miocene and older section in the shallow water are both virtually unexplored, with exploration drilling activity to date mainly restricted to water depths <200 m. This has arguably been due to the imposition of economic sanctions, which have limited the involvement of western companies and the use of the most modern technology and equipment. Fig. 6.1. Offshore regions and licence blocks as defined by MOGE. This figure should be used as a reference for block locations referred to in the text (modified from Ohn Thein 2013). Blocks with a ‘D’ are classified by MOGE as deep-water. The offshore Myanmar basins are dominantly gas-prone, and current remaining recoverable-reserves estimates for the main discoveries based on Wood Mackenzie are Zawtika 2.05 Tcf, Shwe/ShwePhyu/Mya 4.09 Tcf, Yadana 2.89 Tcf and Yetagun with 1.5 Tcf and 41 MMbbls condensate (for field locations see Fig. 6.2). Fig. 6.2. Significant hydrocarbon discoveries offshore Myanmar; note the dominance of dry gas. Offshore exploration started with seismic acquisition in 1966 followed by the first well in 1972. Between 1972 and 1976 some 30 offshore wells (8 in the Rakhine and 22 in the Moattama regions) were drilled without any commercial success; drilling was then suspended from …