"In April 2012, Burma (also known as Myanmar) started seeing the easing and, in some cases, the suspension of decades of sanctions imposed by Western countries after more than 50 years of military rule in Burma. The countries that agreed to suspend sanctions were the United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union (EU), and Japan. The decision was made as Burma?s Government started to implement democratic reforms. With the suspension of sanctions, companies from the countries mentioned above were allowed to start investing in Burma. The United States suspended the sanctions in July 2012 (Pawlak and Moffett, 2012; Spetalnick, 2012). In 2012, Burma produced a variety of mineral commodities, including cement, coal, copper, lead, natural gas, petroleum, petroleum products, precious and semiprecious stones, tin, tungsten, and zinc. On November 11, 2012, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country. The epicenter was located in central Burma near the town of Shwebo, 60 kilometers (km) northwest of Burma?s second largest city, Mandalay. Damage to many buildings was reported, including hospitals, monasteries, and schools, mainly in the villages of Male, Mandalay, Mogok, and Shwebo. Reports also indicated that miners were trapped in a gold mine in the Singgu area in Mandalay. On March 24, 2011, a previous earthquake of 6.9 magnitude had struck the eastern part of the country just north of Tachileik town in Shan State close to the border with Laos and Thailand. Production of such commodities as brine salt and some semiprecious stones dipped during the period following the 2011 earthquake, but the mineral industry in general was not affected (table 1; U.S. Geological Survey, 2011, 2012; Tun, 2012b). Bangladesh, Burma, and India were involved in maritime boundary disputes concerning their respective sovereignty in the Bay of Bengal. For many years, these countries had attempted to negotiate and delimit their claims in the disputed area. In December 2009, Bangladesh and Burma accepted the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) for the settlement of their boundary delimitation. ITLOS is an independent judicial body established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that has jurisdiction to arbitrate disputes arising out of the interpretation and application of the Law of the Sea. UNCLOS establishes a legal framework to regulate ocean space and its resources and uses (International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, 2010). In September 2011, representatives from Bangladesh and Burma met with the ITLOS in Germany for a final round of pleadings regarding the maritime boundary. The final ITLOS judgment of March 14, 2012, dealt with the delimitation in three parts—the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zones and continental shelf within 200 nautical miles, and the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles. ITLOS rendered its judgment in relation to the territorial sea by drawing an equidistant line from the countries? baselines. For the exclusive economic zones and continental shelf within 200 nautical miles, the tribunal decided to draw a provisional equidistant line that adjusts to the concavity of the coast of Bangladesh. For the delimitation of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles, the tribunal concluded that it should not differ from that of within the 200 nautical miles and should continue in the same direction beyond the limit of Bangladesh (International Law Observer, 2012; International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, 2012)..."