Transcript: Episode #187: A Light at the End of the Tunnel
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Host 00:20
You're listening to a special version of the Insight Myanmar podcast, which covers the fallout from the military coup and the Democratic resistance. During this crisis, we are not only ramping up the production of our podcast episodes, but also our blog and other social media platforms as well. So we invite you to check these out along with signing up for our regular newsletter all of our other projects have been paused indefinitely so we can focus entirely on this ongoing emergency but for now let's get into the show
00:58
hello
01:31
hello there mean I I absolutely hate and it is so much fun
Brad 02:07
so welcome back. Today we have a rare follow up episode, we are speaking once again with a young who we interviewed previously talking about the impending electricity crisis in Myanmar and the history that has led to this terrible situation. And today, it does not appear that we will be receiving any good news on that front, but certainly some very important updates. So for the benefit of those who did not listen to the original podcast that we did do, would you like to introduce yourself for our audience again?
Guillaume 02:38
Hi. Yes, thanks for having me back. So my name is Guillaume DeLong. I came to Myanmar as a economics researcher. I became an advisor to the Ministry of electricity and energy from 2018 until 2020, working on access to electricity, but also a range of issues like tariff reform and renewable energy. Yeah, that's a Now I continue to work as a consultant working still on Myanmar energy and climate change.
Brad 03:10
Okay, excellent. And so last time, we spoke, the the impression was quite, quite negative, I distinctly remember asking you whether the Myanmar electricity grid and the Myanmar electricity system as a whole could be fairly compared to South Africa. And you didn't miss a beat? And you said no, because it would be better compared to Lebanon, which is a pretty terrifying statement, statement to make. Are there any particular sort of highlights or takeaways from from our first interview that you think audiences should know going into this discussion?
Guillaume 03:48
Well, I think the main highlight is that most of what was expected, unfortunately, about a year and a half ago, has happened in the energy sector. Myanmar is in a deep energy crisis. There are multiple energy crises, kind of over overlapping each other. There's a crisis in the electricity side, there's a problem on the gas side. So to the extent that Myanmar energy is critical to Myanmar's growth to Myanmar's development to even just the mere resilience of households and businesses, the trajectory between now and 2030 is most likely going to be one some that is along the lines of a country like Lebanon or South Africa, for very different reasons. Most of this crisis is the results of the coup, though it draws its roots in kind of decades of of mismanagement and and poor policies and decisions that weren't made at the right time. But yeah, the sorry to say that there there's not much pause. bit of news on that front, sadly. And I think that that has consequences for many other aspects of life in Myanmar. It has consequences. First of all, just on the the the quality of life of most Burmese people, I think most of our friends, former colleagues and others, report how difficult it is during the hot season to live in most parts of Myanmar without electricity without cooling, but it's also a problem for factories. It's problem for small businesses. We have parts of the country now in rural areas that have I mean, power cuts that last a day two days without warning. And then it has implications for education, it has implications for the health sector, right? How do you keep vaccines refrigerated when the power cut goes off unexpectedly multiple times a day, for long periods of time? How do you do surgery without power and things like that. So I think the broader scenario that the longer trend is most likely one that is quite negative. It can be partly fixed, thanks to a few, a few key policies. But the likelihood of these policies is low, because it would imply that the Myanmar military has some kind of interest in the development of the power sector in the development of Myanmar's economy. And I think that, based on the history of the development of electricity and energy, in generally Myanmar, we can mostly deduct that the military sees energy as a source of rents as a source of foreign currency to fund itself to buy weapons to to fund its cronies and so on and so forth, but has little interest in developing energy in terms of what most governments do, which is develop energy to produce development to improve the life of most people, that is not part of the agenda.
Brad 07:01
And I think, I think I think it's important if we cover just how bad this deterioration is, I think, you know, I lived in Myanmar, you lived in Myanmar. You I think many of our audience either have lived or currently do live. And if they do currently live there, we hope this thing as safe as possible. But for those of us who who lived there, during the NLD years, power cuts are almost a quaint, you know, feature of the country that we remember with some degree of nostalgia, you know, it's they weren't that severe in the major city, they were bad, they were annoying, but they were not that horrific. Whereas the situation that people were facing only a few months ago, even in Django, and people were being told that they were on, I think the last I heard was four and four systems of four hours of electricity and, and four hours of no electricity. But I was being told by by my friends there, that it's a theoretical four hours of electricity, that the four hours where you're without power are guaranteed, but the four hours where you're supposed to have it, you know, you'll either get it or you won't. And people just could not escape from the heat you as you say you can't refrigerate food, you can't cool down, they were taking showers, you know, three, four times a day in some cases without without hyperbole, just to try and cool themselves down. And just to stop, you know, sweating constantly, there was no way you could go. Because everywhere is without electricity. The severity, just from the perspective of the doubt, everyday lives of people seems to have skyrocketed. I teach students currently back in Yangon. And I frequently have to teach students as their power comes and goes. And it makes it very difficult for them to get an education. Of course, the military is taking advantage of this. Because it also stops people from being able to send evidence of war crimes out of the country. So I think I think emphasizing the scale of the degradation that's occurred since the coup is is is important, because there's a there are power cuts, and then there's what's going on in Myanmar?
Guillaume 09:10
Yeah, I think, well, first of all, one critical difference is that as with so many things relating to Myanmar, precooled versus Myanmar post coup, before the coup, you had a situation that granted, the country had many, many problems, many great severe problems. And in the energy sector, there were many problems. I think that the situation in Yangon was tolerable to some extent, but in many parts of the country. I mean, first of all, you had a great portion of the population, about 50% of the population that didn't have access to electricity. And then among those who did have electricity in rural areas, they would still get power, you know, a few hours a day very often during the dry season. So it's not like the situation was significantly was not optimal. Let's say before The difference is that before the coup, there was a sense of things are going to get better. We are on this rising trajectory. And villages, new villages kept getting electrified. I mean, we were talking to 1000s of villages. Every year we're getting electricity, new power capacity was being added to the grid, new companies were investing in, in the power sector, there was so much interest, there was a solar tender, where, you know, you got some of the lowest prices for solar power in Southeast Asia. So there was that upward trend. And then now we're in a very different kind of trend, which is more survival, right. It's about how can we make sure that there's just enough power and Myanmar today to make sure that hospitals and clinics can keep their medicine refrigerated? How can we make sure that there's enough power out there for schools and industries to operate? Right? I mean, I recently did a survey of businesses in urban and rural areas, where 30%, approximately of businesses. In April and May, were saying that the power cuts were a direct threat to the survival of their business, right? That's a third of we're not talking like only big businesses here. We're talking also like mom and pop shops, all over the country farmers, the absence of electricity was a direct threat to the survival of their business. I think that's a major indicator of a kind of systemic problem there, that the scale of the issue is absolutely major. Now, when we look at the at the medium to long term, what's going to happen? So let's look at okay, three kinds of timeframes right now. We have short term, medium term and long term, short term, is it going to get better next year? Short answer? No. Is it going to get better in 2025? Short answer, probably not. If we look at the medium to long term, can it significantly be improved? Yes, with the right kinds of policies by with massive investment in solar, for example, by drawing back in foreign investment by bringing back in those Chinese investors that were so keen to invest in Myanmar at low prices, for example. Those are some of the possibilities but all of this has to be implemented right now. Okay. The challenge at in the medium to long term in basically between 2025 to 2030, is that about 50% of the electricity in Myanmar comes from gas and that gas itself comes from inside Myanmar right. It's it's produced offshore of Rakhine, and Irrawaddy and tannin tie. And some onshore now, that gas is going to run out more or less by 2030 2032. So let me let me simplify that and make that clear. That means that the fuel that is used to produce 50% of the electricity in Myanmar is going extinct effectively. It's not being replaced. So the question we have to ask ourselves today is, how does Myanmar go about functioning as an economy? When half of its power supply disappears? Do you replace it with something else? Do you replace it with other gas resources? Do you import gas from abroad in the form of liquefied natural gas? Do you start producing more gas domestically? Or do you replace that gas power generation with other forms of power such as solar wind, hydro power? Or also then you have the fossil fuels? That's the real crux at the moment.
Brad 13:51
So let me let me just ask a follow up. So Gas, gas is being used to run the power plants, but gas is also a major economic export of Myanmar. Could they effectively extend the lifetime of their gas reserves by no longer exporting the gas?
Guillaume 14:11
Technically, yes. Politically, diplomatically, financially? No. Okay. So technically, yes, it's absolutely possible to, you know, tell Thailand, hey, we're not going to export our gas to you anymore. And we're going to keep it for our domestic consumption. Right. And that's a big chunk of gas, right? The 80% of the gas from the get enough yield gets exported to Thailand, right. 80% of the biggest gas field in Myanmar is exported to Thailand since the 1990s. You could do the same thing with the shale gas field that is off the coast of Northern Rakhine, right. You could say, well, instead of exporting it to China, we're just going to keep it here in in Myanmar. That is, to be clear, technically possible. Is it feasible? I think it's very unlikely. First of all, because Uh, Thailand needs that gas today. Second of all, because China needs and wants that gas too. And these are long term contracts. So basically Myanmar would have to get China and or Thailand to either agree to renegotiate the contracts. The gas exports from Myanmar to Thailand and China are based on an 80 20% distribution. So 80% gets exported 20% stays for or is available for domestic Myanmar consumption. These ratios are part of long term contracts signed ages ago, when the original gassings infrastructure was late. And basically, Myanmar would have to either get China and or Thailand to agree to be like, Well, okay, we'll, we'll find other sources for our own gas. And so you can keep that gas which very unlikely or they would Myanmar would have to just effectively violate the contracts and and and be in breach of contract, and just incur that cost. Whatever happens, the diplomatic cost the financial costs, to keep that gas for domestic Myanmar consumption? Again, both scenarios are very unlikely. And so I don't think that today, there's a great chance of that happening. First of all, Thailand has a lot of concerns about its own gas supplies, which I think are quite overblown, but that's an A question for another day. China also has invested a lot in that pipeline, and in that gas infrastructure, they are quite attached to it. And so the chances of either one of these long term export contracts being renegotiated is very minimal.
Brad 16:55
Interesting. Okay. So before we look at the future, and we've delved into quite a bit of the past and how we got to where we are in the previous interview that we did. And I strongly recommend people who are interested in understanding the history of the Myanmar electricity system. Go listen to that. Let's let's talk about what's happened since the coup, then what impact has the has the coup itself and the subsequent Civil War had on the electricity grid?
Guillaume 17:27
Let's take the just as a little summary of the last episode. Here's what happened right before the coup. Alright. In a nutshell, the power supply was at a critical point where they knew that these gas reserves were going to start declining, they knew that the demand for electricity had grown significantly faster than expected, during that kind of decade of transition, the decade of opening. So they needed to add in urgently. Heaps of electricity capacity. Alright, now that those decisions were delayed repeatedly, and they were only started to be made in 2019 2020. Alright, and so in 2020 19, and 2020, there's a bunch of projects that are approved at the time, that are there really as emergency measures to avoid a massive shortage. All right. Now, what the coup does, is that it basically cancels out all these emergency measures that were taken in, in 19. And in 20. Right. So basically, the power crisis that we're seeing today was is the power crisis that, in a way was expected and was believed to have been barely averted. By the end of 2020, there was going to be a whole new raft of solar projects that were going to be built across the country on a very tight deadline. We had LNG, so Myanmar had started importing gas from abroad to supplement its own gas production, right. There were some hydropower projects on top of that there was more LNG coming online. So it was believed that while the situation was going to remain tricky, these last minute measures, we're going to have avoid the avert that the crisis. The coup basically makes the crisis happen forces that crisis to happen. So the situation today is effectively that Myanmar is able in dry season to produce about as much power as in 2016. Right. So we've really gone back in time in a way in terms of the impact of the coup on the power power grid directly. The first thing that happened is that most of this most of these emergency measures to avoid With that crisis dependent on foreign companies, American companies, European companies, Chinese companies, Thai companies, Singaporean companies. Now, those companies believed that Myanmar was this expanding market, right? Where there was this huge opportunity for growth for growing your company and growing the country at the same time. There was also a sense that you could trust that people signing contracts, right, that's a key parameter. What happens after the coup is that you have such an amount of uncertainty in terms of like, can I deploy workers to my construction zone without them getting attacked? Right? Can I sign a contract in which the SEC is my counterpart? And can they guarantee that they will actually pay me for the electricity that I sell to them down the road, right, because bear in mind that these electricity projects, you build a dam and then you sign a contract for 30 years, right. And so you're going to be selling electricity to the national utility at at a given price for a very long time. You've had that massive investment at the beginning, and you need to recover that over 123 decades. So that that trust dimension is absolutely essential trust in the people that are signing the contracts, trust in the people that are paying you and trust in the overall growth of the economy, because you have to make sure that there will be demand for your electricity down the road, right? What happens after the coup is that that trust evaporates. If you talk today to a lot of the even Burmese stakeholders, companies in the power sector, they will say the main thing that has changed is that that trust is gone. We don't know if our if we're going to be paid, we don't know if we're going to get the loans that we need. We don't know if we're going to be able to convert our profits into foreign currency to avoid being hit by the depreciation of the chat, and so on and so forth. Right. So that's the big thing that changed. Second of all, in terms of the stability of the country, that made a lot of investors sort of take a step back and think, right into independently of their political beliefs or their position relative to the parties to the conflict. They thought we need to see how this plays out. And we need to see when and how the dust settles. And one that once that happens, then we'll see. There are plenty of people in the energy sector that are willing to work with the SEC. To be clear, it's the moral questions here are relatively secondary from the point of view of many investors. The question is, can they trust the regime? Can they trust their counterparts? Can they believe that they can put money in the country and they will make some money out of it down the road? Even in terms of reputational risk. A lot of a lot of companies, particularly companies in Southeast Asia, and East Asia that don't necessarily care as much about the reputational risk as Western companies. What matters the most is their bottom line. And the context that has emerged post coup is absolutely terrible for their bottom line.
Brad 23:36
So So you seem to be saying that the the concerns around unreliability of of people in agencies and finances is greater concern than the concerns around the dwindling supplies of resources that could fund the electricity system itself. It's it's not even the mechanical breakdown of the system. The biggest concern is, is human and reliability.
Guillaume 24:07
Yeah, I would say so. I mean, and you put your finger on an final point that I forgot to mention is indeed what happened post coup is that the the amount of money that was allocated to repairing the grid and fixing the grid and repairing especially after attacks by by PDFs on the grid, or after bombings by by the the top middle Air Force on villages that ultimately destroy a bunch of transformers and power lines and affect everyone around them. The Termidor has effect has effectively stopped maintaining the power grid and Myanmar. There is some maintenance going on, but not at all on the scale that is required. And so today, you still have a lot of the power cuts in the country that are not the result of a shortage. That's that there's plenty of power cuts caused by the power shortage in general, but there's also a lot To power costs that are actually directly caused by just the grid not being maintained, or not being repaired. So you have transformers and villages that just spontaneously burn you have poles that collapse during every rainy season that these things would happen before. But then you would have a team deployed immediately to try to fix that. That doesn't happen as much as before. And so that does affect power supply. Now, does that come into the reasoning of a lot of foreign investors that could potentially be investing in fixing the problem today? It might. But I think it's a minor concern relative to this issue of trust. Ken, is a contract today in Myanmar worth, what it is, what is written on the paper? Or is it worth whatever the mood of mineral line is on that particular day, that has tremendous importance for these kinds of massive projects that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions of dollars. In the case of like some of the dams and LNG projects, you need to be sure that a contract is going to be respected. And there's been a few instances where that has not been the case. And I've definitely disturbed several investors.
Brad 26:22
I mean, that's, I mean, it's fascinating, there's, there's just to get that insight that it's that that trust is such a major component of it. So So let's then move on to what you mentioned. So you mentioned that PDF have been attacking the power grid. Now, this might be surprising to some people, because, of course, the civilians depend very heavily on electricity, it doesn't intuitively make sense that the people's defense forces would try to attack electricity infrastructure. So can you talk a little bit about why they're doing that?
Guillaume 26:57
Sure. What the PDFs have been trying to do is we can put in two batches. The main type of attack is a kind of very targeted attack on the power lines that connect weapons factories and military bases to the national grid. And so you can the the SEC reports on on most of these attacks, and they give you the GPS locations of these attacks. So it's quite easy to see what the PDFs are trying to do. That the global new light of Myanmar itself reports that these attacks are targeting weapons factories, mostly in magway. region. So that's the main kind of PDF attack that that is happening. Those types of attacks have little consequence for the power supply at a national level. Because they just cut off the power to that particular weapons factory. Then you have other types of attacks that are perhaps harder to categorize harder to understand. Some of them are targeting transformers and substations that are kept with let's say, the the nodes in the power grid. That do by attacking those nodes, you do create a certain amount of instability in the power grid that may affect households and businesses all over the country. So there have been a few countrywide outages that were caused by very well targeted a drone attacks by PDFs on critical notes of the nationwide grid. However, the SEC has been communicating about these attacks a lot, because they're trying to portray it as the PDFs are being selfish, and they don't care about the civilians, and all they want to do is destroy the whole country basically. In reality, the overwhelming majority of the power cuts that people are experiencing today in Myanmar are the result of this shortage of this sis systemic shortage of gas of hydropower, of all the solar that was supposed to be built and wasn't built. Of all the promises made since the coup also, because made online have been has been promising a lot and delivering very, very little. Right. So that's the overwhelming majority of of the power cuts. So basically, when you break down the total power cuts in the country, and you look at what is responsible for what the attacks for example, that the candy F and chaos state have been launching on the power lines that connect the dams and qkr to Naypyidaw, they've been at the forefront of this strategy. That's why I mentioned them and they're the the only ones that have really been doing it in a systematic, repeated way where a power line gets bombed, the ministry sends people to repair the line. And then a week later, that same power line is bombed again, and so on and so forth. And that's part of the whole theater of operations of around demo. So mobiIe, pick on that area, Southern Shan, northern Kenya. Now, the attacks there can account for roughly nine to 11% of the power cuts in the country, right? It's a very small fraction, the remaining power cuts are the result of all the power plants that have been shut down since the coup and all the power plants that have been cancelled since the coup as a result of the lack of investor trust investor confidence in the in the in the SEC.
Brad 30:47
Interesting. So it's not so much that the PDF are trying to sort of undermine electricity supply to the civilians. It's it's a, they are trying to be much more targeted in in trying to deny resources and operational capacity to the military. There's just a lot of fallout from that. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. But of course, the military have no interest. So this is the question, what capacity does the military really have to, to repair the damage and to continue their operations? And in that process, do they have any interest in restoring electricity to civilians who have been affected?
Guillaume 31:26
No, no, they don't, they don't. Now, to be fair, repairing these power lines in chaos is first of all very dangerous, because that area is a heavily contested area. Second of all, it is very expensive, right? Like these high voltage lines, cost 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of dollars to repair, right and take a week to fix. So there is also a financial aspect to this. And I think that some of the PDFs know this, that it's also a slow war of attrition, of just denying them the ability to claim that they control the stable country, right to denying them the ability to allocate resources to other things. That being said, because the military fundamentally doesn't really care about these things. If they can just continue delivering fuel to their military bases, and so that they can run generators instead of the national grid. They, if they can logistically do that they will do that.
Brad 32:31
Yeah. Interesting. I mean, it makes sense. And it certainly tracks with the behavior that we've seen of the military in the past. But I do recall you saying in our last interview, and it's something that that stayed with me, because it's it's so self evident, but you don't think about it when you when you grew up with the privilege of reliable electricity that when people don't have electricity, they learn to live without electricity. But when people have electricity, and then they lose it, the reverting to that that old lifestyle is not something that they will take on the chin, they will suddenly resist very aggressively against losing a thing that they have much more so than they would have activated themselves to obtain the thing that they never had in the first place. Is is this electricity shortage? Is this shocking increase in the power cuts, even in urban centers, which which were typically artificially shielded from the worst of this? Is this having an effect on the populace? I do? You know, do you have any insight into that?
Guillaume 33:36
Yeah, I mean, okay, that's a that's a very interesting question. So actually, based on polling, what we see is that people exactly as you you suggest, the people who are in rural areas, when you pull people in Shan State, for example, and you ask them, how they're experiencing this power crisis, because the situation power wise in Shan State is abysmal, is significantly worse than everywhere else in between kind of Mandalay and Yangon. And what the people there say is, well, it's really bad. It really sucks. That being said, it's pretty much the same that it was, you know, 10 years ago. One person said, you know, we used to use candles, and now we're using candles. And you know, we're just back to that. Is it great? No, but we know how to live like this. In urban areas, it's very different. The reactions in urban areas by even by households is much more frustrated, much more angry. And I think that the SEC knows this, and that's why they've been pushing this narrative that all these power cuts are caused by by PDFs, being selfish. They they believe that that has some currency Does that work? Well, that's very difficult to say because Myanmar is so so diverse and points of view on the current political situation is more dire. Is more. The points of view are more varied than does this strategy work? Well, it's really hard to say because Myanmar is such a diverse country. And in terms of specifically the reaction to the coup and the current civil war. There there are, there's a variety of responses and opinions to the current situation. And I think that sometimes from the outside, we can tend to simplify a little bit. And believe that, you know, all everyone is, is in favor of one particular strategy or another. No, there's more, there's more diversity of opinions, let's say, there are people who believe that, you know, the power grid and critical infrastructure fall into that same category as you know, PDFs attacking civilians, or attacking people who haven't had a fair trial, for example, or things like that. Right, that opinion does exist out there. And there is on social media, plenty of criticism of Why are you attacking these, these infrastructures, because you're just making a bad situation worse for us? Where while the military, in their compounds have their have their generators and aren't affected that much that opinion exists out there? And then there's also plenty of people who believe that no, you know, maybe it affects my own quality of electricity. Maybe it's, it's really not great for me, but in the grand scheme of thing, things, I understand what they're doing, and what's the what's the big picture? So I have no idea what is the ratio between those two opinions and all the other possible combinations in between?
Brad 36:54
Interesting, and I mean, yeah, people, people are complicated creatures, and no opinion is ever going to be universal. But let's via then, on to the more sort of numbers side of things. So focusing again, on the electricity systems, not not even just the grid, and power generation, which is, again, something that in the previous interview, we go into very, very much in depth, the absence of sufficient power stations to create electricity. But what you've told us is that approximately 50% of the electricity generated within Myanmar is generated by gas, that gas is domestically produced. And there's not much of a way for Myanmar to hold on to that gas 80%, of which from the other Nuffield, you're saying is is taken abroad to Thailand. And so in your estimation, the gas reserves are going to expire between 2000 32,032. So we're talking about a span of seven to nine years from now. Okay, that's pretty bleak. So, you know, let's, let's brainstorm some options here. Do we have alternative sources of gas, like the other Nuffield, okay, they're losing 80% of the other field. And also you're saying the production there was winding down? Is there anywhere else? They can look for gas.
Guillaume 38:25
Okay, so the first thing is that the way that a gas field, the lifetime of a gas field is basically a stage of exploration, where you're just looking for that gas once you find that gas, you put it into development, that phase takes about five to 10 years and then you have the ramping up of production, you get to a plateau stay at that plateau for as long as possible. And then the decline phase is very rapid, alright. So for example, the yet enough yield has been at a plateau for a few years and has started declining and will decline very quickly from now on. Alright, so the basically you drop by about 15 to 20% in production per year. And so yeah, now is supposed to run out before 2030. Then you have another gasfield colds or tikka, which also exports to Thailand. And then you have the Sheikh athfield in Rakhine that produces for China. So Tikka and che will continue to produce a bit longer, but not that much longer. Alright. The options for Myanmar or their one option is find more gas, develop it as fast as possible and bring it online. But as I said that phase of exploration takes a few years the phase of development takes quite a while five to 10 years and then the phase of actual ramping up before you get Up to that plateau is also several years. So that option of actually producing gas domestically to fix the current problem by 2030 is not really on the table before the coup totaal and a company called Woodside had found gas in an offshore field off of Irrawaddy in Rakhine, called a six. It's a smaller gas field, but still significant. And another one in called M three, which is right next to Yangon. And that one was supposed to be developed by pttep, the Thai company, Thai state owned company. Now both of those gas fields were supposed to come online by the middle of this decade, that's no longer going to happen to Thailand Woodside have pulled out of Myanmar pttep has delayed its development plans for M three. So effectively today, there's really very, very little chance of local domestic gas resources coming online in time to fix the problem. The second option is for Myanmar to import gas from abroad. So when we talk about liquefied natural gas, what we actually mean is it's pretty much the same gas, as you see in pipelines, it's still methane predominantly. The difference is that it is transported in a boat, it's cooled down a lot and compressed so much that it becomes liquid. So you can transport a lot of it over the sea and you don't need a pipeline anymore. That's liquefied natural gas. Myanmar has an LNG terminal near Yangon, that was commissioned in 2020. And it basically only operated for about eight months. Because after the coup, it was shut down. That gas terminal and two power plants that are connected to it are still there, they can still operate. But for the moment, there is no agreement between the companies that are owning and operating the the gas terminals and, and power plants and the Ministry of electric power. So they're just sitting idle there and it's a considerable amount of power, it's 750 megawatts. So one way that they could fix the situation is finding a deal with the Chinese in Hong Kong company that own these, this LNG terminal and two power plants near Yangon, reactivating them, but even that would not be enough, right, that would just fix a small part of the problem, they would need to then build another big LNG terminal somewhere else in the country to import a lot more LNG. What was planned before the coup was to build a big LNG terminal in Irrawaddy in a place called Milan Jiang on the western coast of Irrawaddy to import LNG there to have a giant power plant there. As soon as he got into power, minnow lying approved that project, even though it was pretty much approved before. He proved that but then nothing moved, and nothing has happened since right one of the tricky things with LNG is that it is subject to international price changes right the price of LNG will depend on the supply and demand of the whole world at any given moment. And since the Ukraine war, the price of LNG shot up to a point where it was prohibitively expensive to import it to produce electricity and Myanmar. And it just became unaffordable, and middle line said it clearly several times you considered that LNG was too expensive now and we need to find some other solution. The price of LNG has since gone down, since international gas markets have adapted to the current crisis in Europe and supply and demand is better adjusted now compared to a year ago. And so the prices have gone down quite significantly. And yet despite that, the that has still not been enough to reactivate those power plants in Yangon, or to trigger the construction of that big LNG power plant in Irrawaddy. Why is that well, that big LNG power plant, that terminal plus power plant in in Milan Jiang was supposed to cost about $2.5 billion. Right? So again, we go back to this question of trust of investor trust. If you're going to build a $2.5 billion power plant, and that then you're going to be selling electricity to the state utility. You need to be sure that they are going to be willing to pay for that electricity long term. Apparently the He's Chinese investors predominantly, there's also a Myanmar partner in the in the project, do not believe for now that it is possible to guarantee that at a sufficient level. So that's not happening. So then there is the third and final option, which is pivoting Myanmar completely away from gas, stop using gas for electricity production, decommission all the power plants and switch to something else. Or you know, some kind of mix, then you could have and maybe in the future between a little bit of LNG and something else. In that scenario, Myanmar would build a massive amount of solar. But that wouldn't fix the whole problem, because as you know, solar is going to produce between about 10am to 4pm. And those are not the peak hours. So you need something else it's going to be able to produce in the morning hours, and then in the evening hours. So then you could combine that with something else or with storage, for example, you could combine you can synchronize your solar power with your hydropower, for example, and things like that. But in that scenario, you basically say, farewell to gas based generation, mostly, and pivot to other sources of energy. What I see today is that neither scenario one, two or three is happening. Right, nothing is happening, really, they have built a few small solar plants. There's one small gas plant that's been built by power China in child Pugh, you've had five solar plants built by power China in different parts of the country. To power plants, solar plants were built by subsidiaries of the Asia world crony conglomerate, but apart from that, there's very, very little happening, not at all at on the scale that they would need to be investing at. So those are the three options, none of these three options are currently being implemented. So, okay,
Brad 46:59
so let's just do, you know, abstract thinking feasibility here, let's say by by some miracle, the war ends tomorrow. And you know, a democratic government is instated, and they recognize the significance of the power crisis and they choose to try and address it. What you're talking about for example, with you know, moving away from from gas production, to to, you know, solar plus storage or hydropower or pumped hydro, whatever, as a method of storage, or whatever the case may be. I mean, these are not cheap solar panels are not cheap. hydropower dams are very large, very expensive projects, does Myanmar have the expertise and the funding, and then, on top of that, the time to to complete that transition, assuming we could begin tomorrow.
Guillaume 47:55
Let's look at two key parameters, the time and the price. The time is a critical variable in the case of a scenario where a civilian government is back in power, because a dam in Myanmar takes somewhere between eight and 15 years to build right, a gas plant will take well, in recent years, that the construction time was significantly compressed, but it can take you know, three to five years. A coal plant is also four to six years roughly, a solar plant is a year and a half right 18 months. If a civilian government was in power, they were really have not much choice, but to issue big solar tenders, to get foreign investment back into the country and build a massive stock of solar which the country has an abundance of the countries have has an abundance of land that isn't used for any purpose that is not used for agriculture, that is not used for human settlements or animal rearing or any of these kinds of uses. So they can they can use that land for a massive boom in solar and that was part of the nlds plan before the coup. They could then combine that with wind right massive construction of wind in Rakhine State in Irrawaddy in southern Myanmar also they could add a lot of wind capacity there and do that very, very quickly. They would nevertheless have to think about that kind of critical question of combining diversifying your energy sources because as I said, the solar power is only going to be available for a certain hours of the day right. So either you combine that with sources of storage like batteries or you combine it with hydro or something like that. Or you have to bring in, build other kinds of extra sources of energy, that are mixed in with the solar and the wind and the hydropower, to make sure that there's always enough power. So they would also have to probably keep building some hydropower in parts of the country. I know this is a very sensitive issue, especially among the states, in the country. But that would probably be part of a scenario in which Myanmar can get out of the current crisis by investing massively in solar and wind very, very quickly. And by investing in other sources of energy, more long term such as hydropower,
Brad 50:42
okay, so it is at least within the realm of possibility, to to address this problem, to try to get ahead of it before a complete and total collapse in the early 2000s. Saudis is what you're saying?
Guillaume 50:57
What I'm saying is that getting out of this crisis is not going to be a short term issue. It's going to be it's going to require years and years of good policy planning, smart policy planning, and rebuilding all of that lost trust with investors, both Burmese investors and foreign investors, rebuilding that trust, and that will take time, for sure. And they can you can bring in a lot of solar investment back into the country, I think you'll find plenty of Chinese companies and Singaporean companies and others willing to invest back into that aspect of the Myanmar energy system. But you are going to continue facing major problems with the power system for a few years, even after a civilian takeover. Unfortunately, I think there will have to be also, I mean, here, we're only talking about the capacity issue. But there will also be a financial issue, which is going to be quite a quite a quagmire, I think because one of the aspects of the current crisis is that it's not only a shortage, it's also a financial crisis for the Naypyidaw bureaucracy. It is they are losing a lot of money. In the current situation, despite the tariff reform of 2019, when electricity prices jumped, electricity was free for most of Myanmar during COVID. And a lot of people are still not paying their bills today, because of boycotts and things like that. So there is that financial aspect that will also have to be tackled. And hopefully you want to be in a situation where your energy system is not a drain on your state's resources so that you can allocate money to parts of state action, that are not profit making, right, you can make the energy sector a source of revenue for the state that can then subsidize further investment in the energy sector or subsidize investment in education in health care and others. What you don't want it this is the situation that was the case, roughly since 2014, where the energy sector was losing so much money that it was eating up a lot of resources that were supposed to be allocated to education, healthcare, and in other sectors.
Brad 53:23
So then, I mean, I, I take your point, I think it's it's very fair, and especially now, you know, during COVID, of course, we saw across the board economic decline. But in that post COVID period, the immediate post COVID period, we saw all of the ASEAN countries, rebounding economically, as as was anticipated, except for Myanmar, which continued its economic decline and is on the precipice of complete economic collapse, to be completely honest. So that that question then becomes, even if we assumed a democratic government came over and started operating in as good faith as it could, coming back to the very first point you made, or one of the first points you made about the trust among investors, would there be recourse to woo investors back into the Myanmar context post coup?
Guillaume 54:21
I think that today, you still have plenty of investors in the region, let's say, who believe that Myanmar remains a long term opportunity, right that who believes that, while the current situation is pretty terrible, from a business perspective, that in the long term, Myanmar is going to inevitably grow and the demand for energy is going to grow? Whatever is the political arrangement? I think there's a lot of investors in Southeast Asia and in East Asia and in Northeast Asia, who believe that the question will Be at what price? Will it be possible to build solar at the record beating prices that were achieved in 2020? Right after a civilian takeover? I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. It'll depend really on the terms of that transition. It'll depend on the macro economic policy of that trend of the new government. It'll depend on the belief that what it'll depend on whether investors believe that there is a chance of another crisis happening is this going to become a pattern right of like, peers of democratic rule peers of military rule on and off like that, if it's going to be like that repeatedly. And with every time, these kinds of action reaction and and bloody civil wars, then know that what that'll change for sure the situation and that ultimately gets reflected in the price that companies ask in order to invest into the country. So it'll come down to it'll come down to the terms of the transition. And that'll be reflected in the price. We've already seen it since the coup. Before the coup, the best solar price was 3.8 cents, I believe, per unit of electricity per kilowatt hour right. Now, today, the best price achieved by the SAIC when signing solar contracts is 8.5. Right? The latest price is 8.5. So we've gone from 3.8 to 8.5. That Delta there that do that gap between the two values is effectively the change in country risk and perceived country risk by Chinese investors. So will that gap keep growing? Well, we can effectively every time that there's a new project approved, we can quantify that new country gap by just measuring the price today compared to before the coup?
Brad 57:03
Well, that's more than doubled. by quite a margin. That's intense. So okay, so then then dropping, dropping all the fantasy, and getting down to reality. So we've got seven years, until we hit 2030. What do you think is actually likely to happen between now and then?
Guillaume 57:29
Okay, let's imagine a status quo in a scenario meaning that all current trends in the country remain the same, which, of course, is a purely hypothetical exercise. That's not what is going to happen. But let's for the sake of argument, let's imagine that nothing really changes that we remain in a descending curve into kind of broad instability, failed states with nevertheless big differences between urban areas where there might be some economic activity and some signs of economic recovery, and rural areas where it might be quite different, right, where you might actually still see a real drain of people leaving those areas very high unemployment, stresses on agricultural production, water and things like that food security, and if the current situation continues, and we continue to have a situation in which the SEC announces many new solar projects, but then only you know, 5% get built, which is currently the situation, then we are headed towards a scenario in which big parts of the country will have to be cut off almost permanently from the power grid. And effectively, the power grid is going to kind of focus on its vital organs from the point of view of the SSC, right. So that is going to mean, we're going to focus on supplying naipo, we're going to focus on supplying power to the weapons production factories to a few neighborhoods in Yangon in Mandalay, some of the secondary and tertiary cities, but not much more than that. And then when you'll go into Sagaing, when you'll go into Shan states, even parts of Biko, probably you'll have a few hours of power a day where you used to have maybe 18 hours of power a day, right. That's currently a likely scenario, I believe. Now, what we don't know is how households businesses and foreign businesses will adapt to that situation. There are ways of adjusting to the situation, right? Because remember that for decades, energy in Myanmar was not an issue that the government was involved in that felt they had a responsibility, right. It was something that was effectively just given as a jurisdiction as a responsibility to the people to to village committees, to municipalities to townships and districts, and that was it right? So there is a history in Myanmar of people just taking things.
Brad 1:00:17
Okay, so, so having looked at what, what what do you think is sort of likely likely to happen between now and 2030? Let's sort of briefly venture into worst case scenarios. If, if this conflict continues to rage on, and it's very likely, it appears that it is going to continue for some time, then it's almost guaranteed that the electricity crisis will worsen and more and more of the country will be left in darkness and the length of time and the financial investment required to attempt to overcome this will exponentially increase. If this conflict were to continue for another couple of years. How bad do you think this situation would become?
Guillaume 1:01:05
I think we can consider maybe two or three scenarios. In one scenario. current trends stay the same. And so in that scenario, what we probably see is a country in which electricity supply effectively starts dropping year by year. And in that scenario, what you see is Myanmar energy system sort of being crippled and and focused on its vital organs from the point of view of the SAIC, which would mean maintaining power to, to, to Naypyidaw, maintaining power to military bases, maintaining power to probably parts of Yangon, parts of Mandalay, a few tertiary cities, some of the industrial areas perhaps. But then vast swaths of the country where you would effectively go from having you know, 18 hours of power before to before the coup to having just a few hours, if not no power at all. That is a very possible scenario today. There is another scenario in which the situation doesn't necessarily improve dramatically, but just enough for regional investors to jump back in, even in a limited way at the beginning. Right, investors who would be keen to normalize economic relations, to start rebuilding power plants and building new power plants, extracting more gas and things like that. That's another scenario that is also possible. There are, as I said earlier on the conversation, plenty of companies that in the region are less sensitive to reputational risk, but are sensitive to trust and stability. If the SEC is able to provide even the basic guarantees of stability and safety, then perhaps we could see an improvement in the situation. The challenge in this scenario is that and as with many scenarios, when we think about what happens from now on in Myanmar, is that it? It is based on the assumption that there are people within the SAIC within the tatmadaw within the bureaucracy who want this to happen, who have an interest in an ability to get the country out of the mud in which they have put it. That's where I'm not particularly confident, right? There are plenty of people in China at a political level and in the business world or in Thailand or in Singapore, in ASEAN in general in India, who have the ability, the knowledge, the capital to make these things happen. The question is whether the SEC in all of its glorious incompetence, would be willing to let them do that would be willing to let those funds come in, would be willing to commit to the kinds of mechanisms that guarantee the value of contracts that create that trust, whether they would be willing to do what it takes to stabilize the currency for example, things like that. There's very little evidence in my mind that there's anyone, at least in the Commodore today who is thinking in those terms. And what's what's very interesting there is that that is something that is hard to explain to neighboring countries. It's very hard to explain that because Myanmar is surrounded by a wide variety of regimes, right? They're communist authoritarian regimes, you have democracies, quasi democracies, you have transitioning countries, all kinds, and every single one of them has succeeded at basic infrastructure development, and Myanmar has not. Every single one of Myanmar's neighbors has gone through her rific historic periods of history in the 20th century, horrific bouts of violence, genocide, things like the Cultural Revolution, or the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, things like that. And yet, every single one of them has managed to extricate themselves out of that situation. I'm not saying that life in all of these neighboring countries is fantastic. But on that basic metric of a government's commitment to developing the country, even in a very basic sense of building roads, building access to power, and building access to clean water. Myanmar stands out, compared to all of its neighbors. So there's a reason for that. And the people who are currently in power in Myanmar, are the same people who have put it in that situation. I don't believe that there's anyone currently in the SAIC, who has a greater commitment, or a greater understanding of or greater willingness to build the country than those who are in power under 1020, or under a wing. Right? That that's, that's just not there, in my view. And so that's the bigger issue there is that for neighboring countries, they don't necessarily need to see fully fledged, full fledged democracy in Myanmar to invest in Myanmar again, they don't necessarily need to see, you know, the respect of human rights and the the authors of crimes against humanity being taken to justice that many of them don't necessarily need to see that what they need to see is basic levels of competence and stability, and a basic commitment to developing the country to making the country stronger. That's not currently happening in Myanmar. And that hasn't been happening for decades. So that's I mean, apart from the transition years. So that is something that is very difficult to convey to a regional audience about what is happening in Myanmar, it makes Myanmar so different from most of the ASEAN countries from from all of its neighbors. So it'll depend on whether people in the tatmadaw within the LSAC within the bureaucracy are able to pivot and start doing things radically different, radically differently. If they if that does happen, then we might see an kind of middle way emerge, we might see Myanmar becoming some kind of hybrid regime in which you have limited freedoms, but at the same time, the potential promise of expanded development, better basic infrastructure, and things like that. If it doesn't, then the country probably continues in this confrontation, frontal brutal confrontation between two sides, one side that has no interest in the in the development of the country, and the other that actually wants to change the terms the social contract of the country dramatically to include more decentralization to give more power, including in terms of energy to the states and regions, to the ethnic minorities to the nationalities, apologies to to actually develop the country. Right. And we'll, we might just be stuck in that confrontation for a long time. And the economic consequences of that is a gradual decay, let's say.
Brad 1:09:12
I mean, that's, that's quite bleak. I like
Guillaume 1:09:19
good news. Well, I
Brad 1:09:20
mean, but it's the thing this has been as you as you correctly identify, this has been a theming in MMA for decades and decades and decades. And the irony is, that again, as you point out, every flavor of despotic dictatorial military regime exists surrounding Myanmar. Thailand is under a military dictatorship, again, Cambodia and Laos and Vietnam are all under communist military dictatorships or, you know, one party communist states, China likewise. So, the fact that all of these states have managed to We'll still, you know, move forward not insignificantly. Yes, Chinese investment is heavily responsible for a lot of that, like Laos can can thank China for a lot of its consistent GDP growth. But that doesn't change the fact that GDP is growing. And things are improving and yet Myanmar has stagnated. It's, it's, it's sort of incredible how you can have a country that is so large, so resource rich, so strategically valuably located, and yet still have all of that potential squandered for three quarters of a century. You know, the mind boggles.
Guillaume 1:10:43
It is it is astounding. It's astounding. And it's something that is often difficult to convey. Sadly, that kind of the Myanmar exception in a way, in Southeast Asia and East Asia and South Asia, it's hard to convey just how different the path of the country is compared to all of its neighbors. I mean, to give you, I don't know if I use this statistic in our previous conversation, but in 2021, Vietnam, added just in terms of renewable energy, just renewable solar and wind, right. There was more solar and wind capacity added in Vietnam alone in that year, then the combined power grid of Myanmar, in its whole history, right, that the amount of the amount of power that is available today in Myanmar, when it said like full capacity is less than what Vietnam added only in solar and wind in 2021. Right, like the scale of the gap. And when you look at road development, it is the same when you look at access to clean water, it is the same, that gap with its neighbors is astounding. So yeah, that's why I mean, one thing that we haven't yet discussed is the sanctions. I
Brad 1:12:04
mean, that's the question like, are the sanctions having an impact on that electricity, because that's not something that occurred to me at all, whether they would really be impactful? Especially because sanctions I mean, we spoke to people who are working on the Burma bill a couple of times. And one of the themes that kept coming around was that the US was very, very, very consistent in carving out exceptions for mo GE when sanctions came around, specifically to protect the interests of companies like Chevron. So are you saying that the sanctions are nevertheless having an impact on the sector?
Guillaume 1:12:42
What I'm saying is that I the latest batch of sanctions, so on June 21, the US sanctioned the Myanmar foreign trade bank and the Myanmar investment and commercial bank on top of the Ministry of Defense, these sanctions had been implemented post Saffron Revolution and suspend it and basically they're they've been reactivated in a way I think they are worth observing very, very closely. MF TB particularly is not any bank. MF TB is the bank that effectively represents all state owned and state owned enterprises and ministries in international contracts between Myanmar and foreign stakeholders. So for example, when pttep the Thai counterpart pays emoji II for the gas that has been exported to Thailand. That payment is made to a bank account abroad that is owned by MFT b by the Myanmar foreign trade bank. Right. When the Myanmar gems enterprise buys equipment for mining. That payment is made through the MF TB when a ministry signs a contract with a foreign company for anything, it goes through MF TB, right. So it is effectively a and in most contracts. Actually MF TB is the representative either the representative or the key counterpart, the key intermediary between the Myanmar state on one side and a foreign stakeholder. So sanctioning MF TB has tremendous potential. Let's put it like that. The question is going to be number one, when it comes to emoji II. Are the funds that are currently in M FTP accounts abroad? On behalf of emoji II? Are those funds still going to be able to be repatriated into Myanmar or not? Is it effectively just a stop of stopping future payments to those accounts for gas, or is it actually on top of that an asset freeze? That's that's a very important question to understand what's going to happen with with the sanctions. Secondly, what happened after the previous batch of sanctions after the Saffron Revolution? Was that emoji opened bank accounts in or had intermediaries, including including cronies and others abroad? Who then receive those payments? So the question now is going to be will emoji be allowed to do that again, are we going to see payments for the Thailand's imports of Myanmar gas being made, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars being paid to the bank account of a crony in Singapore or something like that? Is that going to be allowed to happen or not? I don't know. But I think that potentially, sanctioning MF TB can be something that is far more potent than sanctioning emoji itself. Because sang emoji itself has no it has very little existence, legally speaking, in terms of contracts abroad, all things go through other channels. Mostly I'm FTB. So sanctioning MF TV means not only that, you're potentially sanctioning Mo, GE, but you're also sanctioning every single state owned enterprise in the country, and every ministry and all their ability to use dollars to convert dollars to Euros to convert euros to chat to trade with China and things like that. That all goes through MF TB. So the potential for these sanctions is tremendous. The question and as you pointed out, that the key issue is going to be what are the exceptions that are carved out? How aggressive is the implementation? How much monitoring is there on in terms of like, where the alternative channels that the SEC might open up to to allow the funds to still come into the country? If the implementation is strict? And there are few caveats. few exceptions, then these could be the most aggressive sanctions against the SEC since the coup and could have massive consequences.
Brad 1:17:18
That's it. Yeah. But so so you seem to be saying that it is still sort of up in the air? It's a bit hypothetical. We're not, you know, it could have massive ramifications, if they're implemented in specific ways. Is there any way to sort of predict what what is actually going to happen because the Myanmar regime, as many despotic regimes have proven themselves to be particularly slippery. When it comes to sanctions i We recently did an interview about jet fuel imports. And I did We did another interview about exploitation of teak wood, and the ways in which it is possible to massage records logbooks, move things via third countries. All of these these are, you know, daily activities within the regime. So they seem to be very good at sanction busting, and there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of interest internationally, in enforcing what few sanctions have actually been placed. So is there any reason that these types of sanctions would be more likely to actually take root? Is there any any indicator that international actors would be more interested in enforcing these types of sanctions?
Guillaume 1:18:33
I think a major difference today compared to post Saffron Revolution was, is that Chevron and totaal are no longer in the country. That makes a very, very big difference. Because I mean, it's it's self evident rights, the implementing those sanctions for the United States would not come at the kind of cost that it would have at that time, in terms of the interests of Chevron, and the same for the EU with respect to Toto. So I think the the context is different, though, the amount of monitoring and transparency in the international financial system is not the same as it as it was at that time. That being said, I am not like a sanctions busting expert. So I'm sure that they'll try different ways. But there are plenty of people, including people close to the resistance who pay very close attention to those things, and try to signal and track every time emoji II or others try to define new ways. So it'll depend on adamantly on the amount of resources allocated by the United States to to enforcing these distinctions.
Brad 1:19:48
Fair enough. So I think I think we've covered quite quite a lot of topics. It's quite a breadth here and unfortunately, pretty much all of the news is negative I'm even this sort of pie in the sky dreaming What if we win the revolution tomorrow hypothetical, still still has a very steep hill to overcome in order to sort of stabilize the country. So it appears. And I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it appears all but inevitable that Myanmar is headed from an electricity crisis, into what I can only describe as an electricity collapse within half a decade to a decade, during which period of time we, you know, this conflict is is likely to continue in some way, shape, or form, or at least for much of that period of time. You know, I don't know, maybe I'm grasping at straws, is the is there anything positive or uplifting? In this entire mess? Is there any silver lining to this that you found so far?
Guillaume 1:20:57
I come from France, France, experienced occupation, and genocides. total collapse war. I think that there are moments where indeed, it seems that there are no positive ways out. I think in those moments, there is space to reinvent things dramatically, to think about how to basically not be bound by current constraints and think about what is going to happen, how can we do things dramatically different when we get a new shot, I am very hopeful that whatever emerges in the future will be very different. I think that Myanmar, Myanmar went from, you know, in 2011, trying to invest massively in coal to in 2020, creating a massive solar tender. And then even the SAIC itself has been, you know, trying to develop solar. on a large scale, they're failing, but they're they're trying. And I think that the, the energy future of Myanmar by all accounts will be more renewables, partly because that'll be the only viable option that can be financially feasible option that can be built in a short amount of time. But it'll also be more decentralized. I think that there's a growing consensus today, that more choice needs to be given to the different people of Myanmar, to make choices about their energy and their environment at a more local level. And so the the kinds of guidelines that were written in the 2008 constitution, when it comes to energy, for example, that almost all the process is centralized in Naypyidaw. And the there's a small allowance made for state and regional governments to decide on certain kinds of non grid connected mid sized power plants. But effectively that was never used. So I think there is an opportunity here to think about how can we completely redesign Myanmar's energy system to be renewable based to be decentralized to empower people to allow people to have the kinds of development that they want at a local level, which I don't think was the case until now. Right? I was in Napier, for two years, trying to build access to electricity and all these things. And it was an extremely centralized process. It was a process that was partly data driven, but also, you know, a lot of parasitic influences in there. I think there's, there's space here to think big to think new. And I think that a lot of the Burmese people, even people who today are in navy, don't speak to me, they're thinking about how things should be done is changing. And the future bureaucracy that will be implementing these policies, I think will be quite different. If only because so many of the smart minds of the country have taken this time, sadly to go abroad, but in a good way to get you know, top notch education and things like that. So I think they're I have to grasp but maybe you're hearing a bit of Yeah, grasp, I guess, grasping at straws here, but I believe that the future of Myanmar will be more renewable, and more considerate of what the people actually want. Once this current phase is over. I also think that in a way, Myanmar suffers from the proximity with China but also benefits from it. And this might be controversial opinion. But I believe that what we saw in 2020, when all of these Chinese companies came in to try to invest in solar at really prices that basically have the prices that Western companies were offering, is that there is that expertise now in neighboring countries of knowing how to build renewable energy on a large scale quickly, at a low price in countries that are not necessarily the most stable ones, that that skill set that ability, that capital exists around Myanmar, and can flow into the country once the conditions are right. So I think there is an opportunity there, it needs to be properly regulated, it needs to be, you know, the Myanmar people driving that process, and not new, not the outsiders deciding for them. But there is tremendous potential there that can be harnessed down the road. So yeah, there are sources of hope.
Brad 1:26:06
Yeah. I mean, you know, thank you for inserting something positive in what has otherwise been a reasonably disheartening interview. But before we thank you, but before we, we close this interview entirely, you know, as is the custom, if you have any particular final thoughts, or some salient element of what we've discussed today that you really want the audience to remember and, and take forward with them, as they, you know, discuss what they will listening to over the weekend at the watercooler on Monday. Then, yeah, I'd like I'd like to invite you to share some thoughts with us.
Guillaume 1:26:48
I think I would only invite your listeners to consider the impact of this crisis, not only in terms of the political situation, or in terms of the conflict situation, or in terms of the human rights situation, which are all extremely important aspects of this. But also, I think there are some times the the economic aspect of this situation and what I mean, this situation is not only the coup, it's the decades of military rule in general. There is an economic aspect to the tragedy of Myanmar. That is really, really important. I would invite your listeners to try to consider Myanmar not only in terms of its current political crisis, in terms of its identity issues, in terms of its human rights issues, which are all extremely important for sure. But there's also a part of the conversation about Myanmar, not only about the coop, but about the decades of military rule and mismanagement. There's also an economic story there, there isn't a story of economic opportunity cost there for people in not in in a technocratic sense, but in a broader sense of like, when we try to understand for example, what is happening in chaos state today, it is not just about opposition's between PDFs and the middle, right. It is. It is not just about weapons, it is also about the tactics used, it is about why are they trying to cut off these dams. Why are these dams relevant? Why are they important? Why are these powerlines significant? Why are these roads important? Why is this industrial zone important? All of these little aspects are absolutely critical to understanding the economic relations that that ties certain key stakeholders in the country together. I think that it would be good for us to to build on that and also to build on the narrative that some people in ASEAN including the the Indonesian foreign minister have tried to put to put forward which is that this is not only a crappy political crisis, a human rights crisis, a a massive violation of the will of you know, 55 million people. Beyond that, it is also a massive opportunity cost for the people of Myanmar. It is a massive opportunity cost for ASEAN for the people of ASEAN for the companies of ASEAN. It is an a massive opportunity costs for the development of regional unity and stability. It is a massive opportunity costs for keeping that labor that qualified labor in Myanmar. I think that's the a lot of the coverage of Myanmar focuses on political aspects, which are which are critical, and there's tremendous research that goes into that. But I think on the economic aspect of things, and especially when it comes to more quantitative things, or perhaps more boring things like infrastructure, there's perhaps less, we could be paying more attention to those factors because they're critical to really the economic freedom of people of households of individuals of businesses.
Host 1:30:48
I'll be honest, not only is asking for donations, my least favorite thing in the world to do, I find it pretty uncomfortable as well. Yet it is an unavoidable but necessary task in order to ensure that our platform can continue to bring you stories from postcode Myanmar. And unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that there is a basic minimum cost to keep our engine humming. So please allow me to take a moment for that least favorite and uncomfortable thing to do, and ask sincerely for your generosity in supporting our mission. If you found value in today's show, and think others might as well, we ask that you take a moment to consider supporting our work. Thank you for taking the time to hear our spiel. And with that, it's off to work on the next episode. If you would like to join in our mission to support those in Myanmar who are being impacted by the military coup, we welcome your contribution in any form of currency or transfer method. Your donation will go on to support a wide range of humanitarian and media missions, aiding those local communities in need of post. Donations are directed to such causes as the Civil Disobedience movement CVM families of deceased victims, internally displaced person IDP camps, food for impoverished communities, military defection campaigns, undercover journalists, refugee camps, monasteries, and education initiatives, the purchasing of protective equipment and medical supplies COVID relief and more. We also make sure that our donation Fund supports a diverse range of religious and ethnic groups across the country. We invite you to visit our website to learn more about past projects as well as upcoming needs. You can give a general donation or your mark your contribution to a specific activity or project you would like to support, perhaps even something you heard about in this very episode. All of this humanitarian work is carried out by a nonprofit mission that or Burma. Any donation you give on our insight Myanmar website is directed towards this fun. Alternatively, you can also visit the better Burma website better burma.org and donate directly there. In either case, your donation goes to the same cause in both websites except credit card. You can also give via PayPal by going to paypal.me/better Burma. Additionally, we can take donations through Patreon Venmo GoFundMe and Cash App. Simply search better Burma on each platform and you'll find our account. You can also visit either website for specific links to these respective accounts or email us at info at better burma.org. That's better Burma. One word, spelled b e t t e r B urma.org. If you'd like to get another way, please contact us. We also invite you to check out our range of handicrafts that are sourced from vulnerable artists and communities across Myanmar. Available at a local crafts.com. Any purchase will not only support these artists and communities, but also our nonprofits wider mission. That's a local crafts, spelled ALOKCRA FTS one word a local crafts.com Thank you so much for your kind consideration and don't
1:34:13
get me off or whatever Ira Nanga, we're gonna do we are done and the reason is, we got busier and busier yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda No, no