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Thailand Petroleum and Natural Gas
Oil was discovered near Fang in the far north of the country
in the early 1950s, but by the late 1970s the principal field was
reported close to depletion. Onshore deposits were believed to
exist in other parts of the country, and several foreign firms
had exploration concessions in the 1980s. Exploration in the
1970s in the Gulf of Thailand uncovered oil in limited
quantities. Oil shales were found at Mae Sot in Tak Province in
the North. Surveys in the mid-1970s indicated a reserve of about
2.5 billion tons. A smaller deposit, estimated at about 15
million tons, existed in Lamphun Province, also in the North.
Surveys in the Northeast from the mid-1970s showed the existence
of about 2.5 billion tons of oil shale in that region. Although 4
million barrels of petroleum were produced in 1983, extensive
commercial exploitation still seemed remote because of
comparatively high production costs.
In the early 1980s, petroleum products provided about 68
percent of the annual energy requirement. The country was highly
dependent on petroleum imports, and increasing world petroleum
prices had a serious impact on the country's balance of payments.
In 1980 there were three large, privately operated, oil
refineries having a combined design capacity of 165,000 barrels
per day (bpd); government sources estimated maximum capacity at
188,000 bpd. The Thailand Oil Refining Company (TORC) started
operations in the mid-1960s with a capacity of 42,000 bpd. This
was expanded to 65,000 bpd in 1971 under an agreement whereby the
entire operation was to become the property of the Thai
government in 1981. A second fully integrated plant was
government owned but was leased for operation to the private
Summit Industrial Corporation; the lease was due to expire in
1990. This plant had a design capacity of 65,000 bpd. A third
plant was owned and operated by Esso Standard of Thailand and
could handle 35,000 bpd. A very small 1,000 bpd plant was
operated in the far north by the Ministry of Defense to refine
domestic oil produced in the area.
Natural gas was found by international firms in offshore
concessions in the Gulf of Thailand in the mid-1970s, and
subsequent explorations determined that large quantities were
recoverable, sufficient to alter favorably Thailand's energy
position. By 1979 two major gas fields had been generally
delineated, one located approximately 425 kilometers south of a
proposed pipeline terminal east of Sattahip at the upper end of
the gulf, the other 170 kilometers farther south. Proven
recoverable reserves in the first field were estimated at nearly
1.6 trillion cubic feet and probable recoverable reserves at 220
billion cubic feet. In the second field, proven recoverable
reserves were 1.3 trillion cubic feet and probable reserves 4.5
trillion cubic feet. Two smaller fields about 365 kilometers
south of the terminal site were estimated to have about 500
billion cubic feet of recoverable reserves. The country's total
proven reserves of natural gas were estimated at 8.5 trillion
cubic feet in 1984. Thailand's production of natural gas in 1987
was 162.3 billion cubic feet.
In late 1979, the World Bank approved a loan of US$107
million to the Petroleum Authority of Thailand, a state
enterprise, to assist in the first-phase exploitation of the
discoveries. A submarine pipeline was built from the terminal
near Mapthaphut to a production platform at the major field 425
kilometers south in the gulf. When completed in the early 1980s,
it was the world's longest submarine pipeline. Additional
pipelines were built to transport the gas overland, initially to
the South Bangkok Thermal Power Plant and later to a new thermal
power plant at Bang Pakong southeast of Bangkok, built in the
early 1980s under EGAT's 1978-85 power generation development
plan. Gas was also distributed to industrial users along the
pipeline route.
Data as of September 1987
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