A sea route to northeast in the making
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Bangkok, New Delhi Vie for Junta Favors in Dawei Port
April 19, 2008: (Irrawaddy) Overtures by the new Thai government for permission to develop a deep sea port at Dawei—on Burma’s narrow land strip adjoining the Andaman Sea—underlines the intensifying rivalry between Burma’s neighbors. (Weekly Business Roundup)
Dawei, also known as Tavoy, has been coveted by India for years as the possible site of a major trading port.
As far back as early 2005 reports surfaced that New Delhi was about to conduct feasibility studies on a plan to develop Dawei.
The objective was to create a sea trade link from southern India to Southeast Asia cutting out the Malacca Strait around Singapore at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula.
That idea seems to have been sidelined and in the meantime changes in Indian foreign policy have placed more emphasis on opening up India’s restive landlocked northeast states.
Most recently, Burma gave approval to let Indian companies redevelop Burma’s dilapidated west coast port of Sittwe.
Sittwe is also a much cheaper option—US$ 120 million outlay instead of the hundreds of million a major deep sea port would have required.
This begs the question what does the Thai government have in mind for Dawei?
“Its geography puts it in line with Bangkok, and it’s less than 300 kilometers separating the two,” regional infrastructure and energy industries consultant-analyst Jeff Mead, based in Hong Kong, told The Irrawaddy.
“It could be very attractive for Thailand to ship in oil from the Middle East, via this route. And Thailand’s PTTEP has a major new gas development [the large M-9 block] in the nearby Gulf of Martaban.”