Oil firms prop up Dictatorship

Oil firms continue to pump support

October 01, 2007
BANGKOK: Despite global outrage over Burma's bloody crackdown on dissent, multinational firms are still vying for the country's rich natural resources, throwing an economic lifeline to the military regime.

Last week, Indian Oil Minister Murli Deora was in Burma's capital, Rangoon, for the signing of contracts between state-controlled ONGC Videsh Ltd and Burma's military rulers to explore three offshore blocks.

Companies from China, South Korea, Thailand and elsewhere are also looking to exploit the energy resources of the Southeast Asian country.

US energy giant Chevron, French oil group Total and China's top oil producer, China National Petroleum Corporation, are among companies giving much-needed income to Burma, defying activists' calls to pull out.

France's Total SA and Malaysia's Petroliam Nasional Bhd, or Petronas, pump gas from fields off Burma's coast through a pipeline to Thailand, which takes 90per cent of Burma's gas output, according to Thailand's PTT Exploration & Production Plc.

But investing in Burma has brought accusations that petroleum corporations offer economic support to the country's repressive junta, and in some cases are complicit in human rights abuses.

"They are funding the dictatorship," said Marco Simons, US legal director at EarthRights International, an environmental and human rights group with offices in Thailand and Washington. "The oil and gas companies have been one of the major industries keeping the regime inpower."

Debbie Stothard, a co-ordinator of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, a regional pro-democracy body, said: "All these profits go to theregime.

"These companies don't care about human rights and what is going on in Yangon (Rangoon)."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy last week urged his country's businesses, including Total, to freeze their investments in the impoverished nation, which has been ruled by the military since 1962.

Total has a 31per cent stake in Burma 's major Yadana project, which would carry gas from fields in the Andaman Sea to power plants in Thailand.

Altogether, nine foreign oil companies are involved in 16 blocks exploring for oil, enhancing recovery from older fields, or trying to reactivate fields where production has been suspended, according to Total's website.

Japan's Nippon Oil Corp, South Korea's Daewoo International, Malaysia's state-run Petronas and two Indian power giants, Gail India and Oil and Natural Gas Corp, are also jockeying for billion-dollar contracts.

In Tokyo, Nippon Oil said there would be no change in itsBurma operations following the crackdown on demonstrations. "We see the political situation and energy business as separate matters," a company spokesman said.

He declined to say how muchNippon Oil has invested inBurma.