According to Soe Myint, the director general of the Energy Planning Department, this emergence will be facilitated by both growing regional demand and Myanmar's latest gas discovery in the Bay of Bengal.

According to Soe Myint, "The [discovery of] gas reserves off Myanmar's northwestern Rakhine state in the Bay of Bengal [has] opened up a whole new vista of exploration activities."

Soe Myint's confidence is backed by the discoveries in Block A-1, off the coast of Rakhine, and the gas garnered from both the Yadana and Yetagun gas fields, which the official believes will help Myanmar become a major player in the region in the gas sector in the coming years.

"While the consumption of natural gas in the Asia-Pacific region is growing, no new substantial reserves have been discovered in the past 10 years by major producing countries such as Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia. The failure by other major gas-producing countries in Southeast Asia to find new reserves, as well as the development of interregional gas pipelines, [is] working in Myanmar's favour," said the official.

Soe Myint would not give the details of the size of the reserves at Block A-1 but did reveal that commercial production is expected to begin in two to three years' time.