NEW DELHI, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- Myanmar has declined gas to India, preferring instead to tie up with a Chinese firm, dealing a blow to a proposed India-Bangladesh-Myanmar pipeline.
"Ajay Tyagi, joint secretary (gas), Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas had to cut short his trip and return back after Myanmarese authorities said they had tied-up gas sales with China," an industry official said. His comments were reported by the semi-official Press Trust of India.
Myanmar instead signed a deal with the Hong Kong-listed PetroChina for gas from the A1 block in Bay of Bengal. Under the Dec. 7 deal, China will buy 6.5 trillion cubic feet of gas from the block over 30 years.
Both India and China have aggressively courted global energy sources to feed their expanding economies and China has beaten India in several of those bids.
