HATLEY, ALLEN G., Energy Ventures Group, Utopia, TX

ABSTRACT: The Shan Plateau, Union Of Myanmar: A New Exploration Frontier

The Shan Plateau, is an area of over 75,000 square miles (200,000 sq km) of unexplored highlands and jungles in the eastern half of the Union of Myanmar (Burma). This poorly understood frontier exploration region is one of only a very few large onshore sedimentary areas left in the world with a good potential for the discovery of hydrocarbons, that has neither been adequately mapped nor has had test wells drilled in the area to explore for oil and natural gas.

Oil has been produced in Myanmar since the late 19th Century. But that oil has been produced exclusively from the Tertiary Central Basin, immediately west and adjacent to the Shan Plateau.

Like parts of southern China and northern Thailand, the Shan Plateau has its hydrocarbon potential in Paleozoic and Mesozoic sediments, and in several Tertiary lacustrine basins located in a number of isolated depocenters within this area. The Shan Plateau contains a composite sedimentary section over 20,000 feet (6,000 m) thick, ranging in age from Pre-Cambrian to Recent. Various lithologic types are represented in the stratigraphic section, which also reveals several periods of uplift, erosion and igneous intrusion.

Source rocks are expected in several Silurian age units, the Late Paleozoic Plateau Limestone, the Jurassic Loi-An Series, and in the Cenozoic lacustrine shales. Various Paleozoic carbonate and selected clastic units throughout the stratigraphic section should provide adequate reservoirs, either resulting from primary porosity or through fracturing.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90987©1993 AAPG Annual Convention, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 25-28, 1993.