This year’s suspension of U.S. and European Union sanctions against Myanmar has captured the attention of investors across the globe. Already some of the world’s best-known brands, General Electric and Coca-Cola among them, have made moves to capitalize on a consumer and labor market of about 60 million people and a strategic location between China and India.

Even more promising is what the world’s major oil and gas companies predict will be a vast store of natural resource wealth. That still largely untapped wealth is expected to become the country’s key economic driver going forward.