Chevron exits Yadana project, ending partnership with military-run MOGE

The American energy giant Chevron has withdrawn its investment from the Yadana natural gas field project in Myanmar, according to one of its partner entities, the Thai state-owned fossil fuel company PTT Exploration and Production Company (PTTEP). In a letter sent to the president of Thailand’s stock exchange on Friday, PTTEP chief executive officer Montri Rawanchaikul said that a Chevron subsidiary—one of the participating stakeholders in the Yadana project—had transferred its ownership interest to “the remaining partners.” “Unocal Myanmar Offshore Company Limited (UMOC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Chevron Group, had decided to withdraw its investment in the Yadana project. All withdrawal processes were subsequently fulfilled on 5 April 2024,” the letter said. The letter, posted by the pro-democracy investigative group Justice for Myanmar (JFM) on its Facebook page, also said that PTTEP now controls a stake of nearly 63 percent in the project. Although the letter did not say which remaining partners control the remaining 37 percent of shares, the only other known recent stakeholder in the Yadana project is Myanmar’s state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE). Myanmar Now attempted to contact PTTEP to confirm whether MOGE now controls the remaining 37 percent stake in the Yadana project but did not receive a response. At the time of Myanmar’s military coup, the Yadana project was a joint venture among four partner entities to extract natural gas from offshore reserves in the Indian Ocean. MOGE held a 15 percent stake in the venture that later increased to 21.8 percent, while PTTEP, Chevron, and the French energy company TotalEnergies each controlled stakes of between 20 and 30 percent. Nearly a year after the coup and following months of pressure from pro-democracy and civil society organisations, Chevron and TotalEnergies announced plans to withdraw from Myanmar in January 2022. Chevron’s stake in the Yadana project increased to 41.1 percent when TotalEnergies exited the Yadana project later that year. The American company apparently abandoned its plans, announced in February 2023, to sell its stake to the little-known Canadian company MTI Energy Inc., which was feasible in part because the Canadian government had refrained from imposing sanctions on MOGE. “Chevron’s planned sale to Canada’s MTI Energy also appears to have been cancelled after civil society pressure,” JFM said in a social media post, referring to complaints filed by Earthrights International and other groups alleging that MTI had breached the ethical business guidelines of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). “Chevron is obliged to divest from Myanmar responsibly, in line with the OECD Guidelines and UN Guiding Principles on business and human rights. This means being transparent with the people of Myanmar about its human rights due diligence and providing remedy to the victims of its business in Myanmar,” JFM spokesperson Yadanar Maung said. “The onus is now on PTTEP and the Thai government to stop funding the junta, and for governments to finally coordinate sanctions on MOGE,” she added. MOGE is one of the Myanmar junta’s largest sources of foreign revenue—which totaled US $60 million a month by late 2021. Western and Thai companies’ cooperation with MOGE drew widespread criticism and calls for sanctions from groups and activists opposed to military rule. The European Union sanctioned MOGE in 2022, and the United States Treasury Department imposed limited sanctions on financial transactions with MOGE in October 2023. The United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have yet to sanction the military-run energy company.

Chevron exits Yadana project, ending partnership with military-run MOGE

Under pressure from rights and democracy advocates, the U.S. corporation has been promising to divest from a joint project with Myanmar’s military-owned entity MOGE for more than two years

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