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tate-owned oil and gas firm PT Pertamina says that it wants to be one of the first Southeast Asian firms to enter Myanmar as the formerly reclusive nation opens its petroleum business.

Pertamina president director Karen Agustiawan told The Jakarta Post recently that the firm, currently the second-largest oil producer in Indonesia, was currently evaluating conditions in Myanmar’s upstream oil and gas business.

“We want to explore prospects for the upstream sector,” Karen said recently in Jakarta. “In the near future, we may step into the country’s downstream business first.”

Karen was commenting on prospective investments in Myanmar, which has been holding oil and gas auctions since a civilian government took over from the military in 2011.

Acknowledging potential reserves of 3.2 billion barrels of oil in Myanmar, Karen said that Pertamina would evaluate exploration activities in Indonesia’s fellow ASEAN member nation.

Decades of rule under a military dictatorship in Myanmar have been cited as the principle reason behind a dearth of exploration activities to unearth new hydrocarbon reserves in the country.

The Edinburgh-based energy think tank Wood Mackenzie said in a 2012 report that offshore Myanmar was a emerging key area in 2013 for multinational oil companies, with special focus to be paid to the nation’s deep-water areas.

In 2012, only three block licenses were awarded to foreign oil companies, down from 12 in the previous year.

Two of the three onshore blocks were awarded to Malaysia’s Petronas Carigali and India’s Jubilant
Energy.

This year, at least three firms, including Petronas, France-based Total and Thailand’s PTTEP, are set to begin exploration offshore Myanmar.

Earlier this year, the government of Myanmar announced that bids for 18 oil and gas exploration blocks would be due by March 17 where foreign firms were expected to partner with state-backed firm Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, Reuters reported, citing local newspaper.

Contacted separately, Pertamina investment-planning and risk-management director Afdal Bahaudin told the Post in a text message that the company was seeking to explore the potential gas reserves in the offshore Myanmar.

“Thus far, [Pertamina’s] data for Myanmar includes the offshore exploration potential to tap into natural gas reserves,” he said.