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Assam-based Numaligarh Refinery (NRL), in joint venture with Parami Energy Group, has entered the fuel retailing business in Myanmar.
NRL, a subsidiary of BPCL, becomes the sixth fuel retailer in Myanmar, which includes Shell, Total and a clutch of companies from Vietnam and Thailand.
Two road tankers, carrying approximately 4,000 gallons of fuel each, will enter Myanmar from the Moreh-Tamu border and the north-west of Myanmar. This will be scaled up to 10-12 tankers a day in due course.
“Currently, fuel comes to Myanmar through the sea route and is transported to the northern region (by river and road). We are trying the reverse logistics arrangement,” Ken Tun, CEO, Parami Energy, told BusinessLine .
This move, if successful, will reduce the price of fuel in the remote parts of upper Myanmar that currently contributes 30 per cent of 200,000 barrel per day sales in the country.
Depending on sales, the Parami-NRL JV will increase the supplies to 70,000-80,000 barrels a day.
For NRL, which has excess refining capacity compared to the North-Eastern States’ market size, this is a major opportunity. It has already proposed setting up a pipeline, if the sales reaches a critical volume.
A first generation entrepreneur, the 43-year-old Ken Tun has business interests in logistics and energy. He had been the local partner of Punj Lloyd for constructing a section of the 780-km gas and oil pipeline connecting the port of Kyauk Pyu in Rakhine State of Myanmar to China.
Parami also owns 90 per cent stake in an onshore block where India’s Jubilant holds 10 per cent participatory stake.
Talking about his fuel retailing business, Ken Tun said he was not interested in merely trading and was keen on setting up a complete value chain.
Myanmar suffers from low access to electricity with 70 per cent of population still out of the distribution map due to absence of transmission infrastructure. Ken Tun wants to enter the mini-grid business with diesel-solar mixed generation.
Ken Tun has also negotiated a deal with the Adani Group for importing electricity.
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