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Total—France’s largest and most profitable company—has been a major investor in Burma’s Yadana gas field since 1992, and production from Yadana represents 60 percent of Burma’s gas exports to Thailand.

“If we take a firm stand—this would have to be decided at the highest level of state, and we’re going to review the situation in the coming days—that would mean cutting off gas supplies to a good part of the Burmese population, not to mention the city of Bangkok, since the gas also goes to Thailand,” Kouchner said in May, also warning that if Total was forbidden from working in Burma’s natural gas fields, Chinese firms would be quick to pick up the slack.

A pull-out by Chevron and Total could also backfire in other ways, according to Derek Tonkin, the former British ambassador to Thailand, who is now the chairman of the NGO Network Myanmar. He suggested that lower wage costs incurred by Asian operators could result in more money accruing to the Burmese regime, as well as there being fewer safeguards for both local people, who currently benefit from Chevron/Total’s welfare and security measures where none would exist under a Burmese army security team, and for the environment.

Meanwhile, a booming China, with its voracious appetite for oil and urgent need for security of oil supplies, has signed a deal with the Burmese military junta to build cross-border oil and gas pipelines more than 1,930 kilometers (1,200 miles) in length from Kyaukpyu Port on the Bay of Bengal through Burma to southwest China.

China will use the planned pipelines for importing natural gas and oil from the Middle East and Africa, which currently supply 85 percent of China’s demand for oil, helping China to reduce oil shipping through the Malacca Strait. As part of the current strategic and economic move, China has now secured a 30-year deal from the junta for natural gas tapped off the Burmese coast.

However, some Burma experts argue that Burma’s ultranationalist generals are not merely puppets of China and that Chinese influence on Burma has been exaggerated. While the Burmese military has used its relationship with China to strengthen its hold on the country, it is becoming increasingly concerned about China’s growing economic domination and will be worried that tougher Western sanctions could push the country’s biggest gas field into Chinese hands, argued economics professor Sean Turnell of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

“If China was to grab this [Total operation] ahead of the big Shwe gas project already bottled up by them, Burma’s economic vassal state destiny would be almost complete,” Turnell told The Irrawaddy. “You don’t want to hand over pricing power of your most important export commodity to your principal customer. Yet this is what would happen if Total divested and China took its place. It would be a monopoly buyer able at will eventually to push down the prices Burma gets for its gas,” Turnell said.

However, Burma’s gas reserve—the Shwe field alone might be up to 14 trillion cubic feet—is also attracting other energy-hungry neighbors and investors. India is keen on exploiting Burma’s huge oil and gas resources. In 2007, India signed a production deal for three deep-water exploration blocks off the Arakan coast as part of the Shwe Gas Project, a project of the regime-owned Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) in partnership with Daewoo of South Korea (60 percent), the state-owned Korean Gas Corporation (10 percent), India’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) (20 percent) and the Gas Authority of India Ltd. (GAIL) (10 percent).

The Burmese generals know very well that they have no shortage of friends. Current investors in Burma’s oil and gas industry include companies from Australia, the British Virgin Islands, China, France, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Russia and the US.

“When Premier Oil withdrew, partners Petronas (the Malaysian oil firm) took over Premier Oil’s stake and then subdivided this among Nippon Oil and Thai PTTEP,” Tonkin noted. He said it is normal contractual practice for existing partners to have the right of first refusal, so that in the event of a Total or Chevron withdrawal, MOGE and Thai PTTEP would be offered the stake first. “In short, China could be the last in the queue of applicants, after Thailand (first), then Malaysia, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and Indonesia.”

Advocates of sanctions have pointed to the success of the sanction model against apartheid-era South Africa. In the case of South Africa, sanctions were imposed by a broad coalition of its major trading partners including neighboring countries. Burma’s energy-hungry neighbors and the global and regional oil companies dealing with the regime have been the major lifeline keeping the military in power.

Gas revenues have been supporting the country’s military junta, who are misusing it, turning the gas into a “resources curse” for Burma, Turnell has suggested. The Australian economist noted in a recent report for Macquarie University’s Burma Economic Watch that large natural gas reserves offered an opportunity for the country to lift itself off the economic floor, where it was already languishing before Cyclone Nargis hit.