NGA NAUNG MONE, Myanmar — Soon after dawn, Win Myint Oo, bleary-eyed and wearing just a longyi, a traditional Burmese sarong, starts a generator and squats on a bamboo platform suspended under a 40-foot, jury-rigged derrick: just three steel poles and bamboo struts lashed together with rope.

The generator powers a winch that lowers a blue plastic pipe 1,500 feet into the ground, then pulls it back up filled with black crude oil.

Like the other prospectors trying to draw the dregs out of Myanmar’s largest unregulated oil field, Mr. Win Myint Oo, 24, came with a dream of striking oil and making it rich.

“I hope I have the chance to be a big boss,” he said. “If I get lucky I want to open a car showroom. I love cars. Maybe I will become Formula 1 champion, one day.”