Early photos of cyclone damage in Burma

Photos: Burma Devastated by Storm

Posted to Burma Digest May 5th, 2008

_ photos from AP, AFP, Reuters, BBC & MRTV

2 Responses to “Photos: Burma Devastated by Storm”

 

Generals failed to act on early warning of cyclone

India, Thailand Warned Burma of Approaching Cyclone

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By THE IRRAWADDY

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The huge death toll in the cyclone that hit Burma last Saturday would not have been so high if the Burmese government had heeded warnings from India and Thailand that a cyclone was on its way, according to meteorological experts.

India’s state-run Meteorological Department said it had alerted Burma two days before the cyclone struck. The department’s spokesman, B P Yadav told reporters in New Delhi on Wednesday: “Forty-eight hours in advance we informed the Burma weather department about the likely area of landfall as well as time and intensity of the cyclone.”

The New Delhi-based Meteorological Department issues regular cyclone warnings and updates to Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Oman and Pakistan, Yadav said.

The Thailand-based Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, set up after the 2004 tsunami, said it had also warned Burma that a cyclone was on its way. The center’s executive director, Dr Bhichit Rattakul, said Cyclone Nargis had been detected in the Bay of Bengal on April 27, five days before its landfall in Burma.

The Burmese government says warnings of the approaching cyclone were published in the official press. The state-back media, however, concentrated almost exclusively on the constitutional referendum in its coverage of current affairs in the days leading up to the cyclone’s arrival.

US First Lady Laura Bush is among those who have accused the regime of failing to warn its people of the approaching cyclone, which struck Burma with devastating effect. Washington’s Rangoon charge d’affaires believes the death toll could exceed 100,000. More than 1 million people are homeless.

The government declared five disaster zones—Rangoon, Irrawaddy and Pegu Divisions and Mon and Karen States—and said that Saturday’s constitutional referendum would be suspended in 47 of their townships. But on Wednesday 24 townships were removed from the list.

The regime’s mishandling of the crisis, particularly its neglect of the warnings from India and Thailand, has sparked widespread criticism and anger. A senior journalist in Rangoon lamented: “They [Burmese generals] are concerned with how to maintain their grip on power. They have no idea at all of how to protect public welfare.”

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Poor relief efforts may undermine generals in Burma

Analysis: Deadly cyclone poses political risks to Myanmar’s ruling generals

May 7th, 2008

Analysis: Deadly cyclone poses political risks to Myanmar’s ruling generals
AP
Posted: 2008-05-06 21:04:58
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) – The deadly cyclone that ripped into Myanmar over the weekend could shake the stranglehold on power of the country’s ruling generals – becoming a force for change more powerful than massive pro-democracy demonstrations and international sanctions.

Natural disasters by themselves are unlikely to trigger change, but instead tend to help undermine already corrupt or failing systems.

Few people think revolution is in the air in Myanmar – not while the victims are still burying their dead, now totaling 22,000 and climbing.

But by an unusual accident of timing, the cyclone ripped through the country Saturday, just a week before the May 10 referendum on a proposed constitution that the military hoped would go smoothly in its favor, despite opposition from the country’s feisty pro-democracy movement.

The vote now gives people a rare and relatively safe way to express their discontent with the country’s junta.

The higher the death toll climbs – and the less effective the government’s relief efforts prove – the bigger the potential for undermining the military’s mandate to rule.

Already, in a society that is notably superstitious, the bad aura surrounding the tragedy has attached itself to the junta.

“The juxtaposition of the cyclone and the voting might cause many in Burma to feel this is an indication that the military should not be in power,” said David Steinberg, a Myanmar expert at Georgetown University, said he said, referring to the country by its old name.

He said traditional views in some parts of Asia consider rulers as responsible for natural conditions. If disaster struck, the administration could be considered to have lost “mandate of heaven.”

The military has long ruled by fear, especially ever since 1988 when thousands were killed when the army quashed massive pro-democracy demonstrations.

The lesson was reinforced last year, when new pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks were suppressed by force, with at least 31 people killed and thousands arrested.

“I have been struck (by) … how open many in Burma have been in contrasting the regime’s rapid and in-force response to the events of last year, and their all-too-typical laggardly and underwhelming response to disasters such as this,” said Sean Turnell, an economist specializing in Myanmar at Australia’s Macquarie University.

“Responding to natural disasters is precisely the sort of thing ‘real’ armies do well elsewhere, but never in Burma,” he commented.

While the military and other government authorities kept a low profile Monday in Yangon’s storm-battered streets, civilians and Buddhist monks banded together, wielding axes and knives to clear roads of tree trunks and branches torn off by the cyclones 190 kph (120 mph) winds.

“Where are all those uniformed people who are always ready to beat civilians?” said one man, who refused to be identified for fear of retribution. “They should come out in full force and help clean up the areas and restore electricity.”

Myanmar’s people will likely remember who came out to help them in their time of need.

“If Buddhist monks have mobilized to provide assistance, as often happens in Asian countries, the contrast in response will further work to undermine whatever credibility the junta has left,” said Ben Wisner, a disaster and urban affairs expert at Oberlin University.

The need for a massive relief effort pose a dilemma for the junta: how much assistance to accept from abroad.

Allowing any major influx of foreigners could carry risks for the military, injecting unwanted outside influence and giving the aid givers rather than the junta credit for a recovery.

However, keeping out international aid would focus blame squarely on the military should it fail to restore peoples’ livelihoods.

The most extreme change could come within the military itself.

The cyclone’s aftermath, said Turnell, “may also just present an opportunity for more moderate, rational people in the military to assume greater control.”

If the relief effort discredits the current leadership, said Josef Silverstein, a Myanmar expert formerly with Rutgers University, younger officers could take the opportunity to make bid for power.

“With the devastating sudden impact of natural disasters, there tends to be a huge anger from the public for the inadequacies of the state to respond to the needs of disaster affected people,” noted Dr. Alpaslan Ozerdem of the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit of the University of York.

“Consequently the image of the state as a paternal figure – a heavy handed protector – collapses spectacularly,” he said.

Cases in recent history where disasters helped blaze a trail for reforms include a 1985 earthquake in Mexico that many believe marked the beginning of the end for the long-ruling PRI party; Nicaragua’s 1972 earthquake, which led to the decline of the dictator Somoza; and a 1970 cyclone where Pakistan’s inadequate relief efforts contributed to the breakaway of the country’s east to form Bangladesh.

 

BBC reports Burmese generals slow to accept aid

Eyewitness: No help after cyclone

By Paul Danahar BBC News, southern Burma

Villagers have no food or fresh water and very little shelter

We’ve seen the terrible trail of destruction left behind by the cyclone.

You drive round a corner and you see a village which has literally been wiped off the map. People are scavenging around, trying to get bits of corrugated iron to rebuild their homes, trying to get some shelter.

For now they have no food and no shelter. Their water supplies have been contaminated.

A full six days after the cyclone slammed into this country, there is so much aid sitting on the borders; there are so many needy people. And the two are not getting together.

So the people who have survived are living with thousands of corpses, polluting their environment, polluting their water supply, and the risk of disease taking hold is getting worse and worse by the day.

What is uncommon is that it’s taking so long to get a clear picture of the challenge ahead. Normally three or four days after a disaster such as this, the numbers of casualties lurch upwards. But by now we should at least have a clear idea of the scale of the problem.

We still do not know because there are hundreds of thousands of people locked off by the broken bridges and blocked roads, and by a government which simply cannot commit to allow in outside help and assessment.

Normally when you cover a natural disaster the roads you are going down are choked with relief effort. The roads we have been going down, straight into the Irrawaddy delta, are empty

It feels incredibly depressing and intrusive to walk into one of these villages. Your only reason to be there is that you feel you are telling the outside world what is going on.

What is bizarre in this circumstance is that normally you are welcomed as a journalist by the government that is trying to cope with a disaster. They want the world to know, because they want the world to give help.

Yet we are having to hide from the government here. We are having to send our material out while hiding in paddy fields. It’s an absurd situation. So we go into a village but we can’t stay long, because if the army does come round the corner we may be arrested and we may be sent out.

Normally when you cover a natural disaster the roads you are going down are choked with relief effort – with refugees going one way and with aid going the other. The roads we have been going down, straight into the Irrawaddy delta, are empty.

Some aid has arrived in the country. Some of it is being flown around by the few helicopters available.

Waiting for help, but there is little news on the arrival of aid

But this is a massive problem over a huge area. The government simply doesn’t have the resources to deal with it.

The people we have been talking to have no source of information. They have lost their electricity and their televisions and radios. And they are not getting information from the government because they are not seeing the army or the police.

One man said to me earlier in the week: “When we had demonstrations last year the army were everywhere; where are they now?”

Villagers we have talked to say we were the first people they had met from outside their own community. They don’t know why help has not come.

One villager told me: “We don’t know the reasons why – we have heard that foreign aid may be coming. We really want it, but we don’t know when we are going to get it.”

This was a man standing in the wreckage of his home.

 

The rape of Burma: where did the wealth go?

Friday, May 2, 2008

By SEAN TURNELL

SYDNEY — Burma, once the richest countries in Southeast Asia, today is mired in deep poverty — its economy ruined by nearly 50 years of economic mismanagement under military rule. And yet, over the last few years Burma has also emerged as a significant producer of energy in Southeast Asia. Thanks to large fields of recoverable natural gas located offshore, Burma now earns substantial foreign exchange revenues. At present, most of these revenues ($1 billion to 1.5 billion per year, depending on price fluctuations) come from Thailand. Gas from Burma, piped onshore from the Gulf of Martaban, generates around 20 percent of Bangkok’s electricity supply.

If all goes well, new gas fields recently discovered in the Bay of Bengal will provide even more gas for China’s Yunnan Province. To get the gas into Yunnan, a much longer pipeline — running the length of Burma — must be built. The project will be as difficult as it will be controversial. But, with no environmental or labor standards to contend with, few doubt that the pipeline will proceed.

So, given its newfound energy riches, one might expect Burma’s public finances to be rather flush, with surpluses aplenty to spend on health, education and much else that the country so desperately needs. Alas, almost none of Burma’s gas revenues actually feed into its budget, owing to a rather ingenious device employed by the Burmese junta. The device is simple. Like many countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, Burma has a dual exchange rate system. The official exchange rate pegs Burma’s currency, the kyat, at a rate of six to one against the U.S. dollar.

The informal or black market exchange rate determines the value of the kyat according to supply and demand in the marketplace. Trading kyat in the black market is formally illegal, but it is the only way that people unconnected to the regime can ever hope to come across foreign currency.

According to the informal exchange rate, the kyat’s worth is currently about 1,000 to one against the dollar. Given this dual exchange rate system, hiding Burma’s gas earnings becomes easy. By recording earnings at the official exchange rate, they are worth nearly 200 times below what they should be.

Thus, Burma’s gas earnings of around $1.2 billion for 2006-07 are rendered into a mere 7.2 billion kyat in the country’s public accounts — less than 1 percent of the regime’s official public spending. Recorded at the market exchange rate, however, these earnings translate into 1.2 trillion kyat — an amount large enough to eliminate Burma’s budget deficit, as well as the destructively inflationary money printing that is the regime’s preferred method of public finance.

So where do Burma’s generals hide all the money they keep away from the state’s budget? No one but the generals knows for sure. An inspection of the vaults of the country’s Foreign Trade Bank might be a good place to start, however, as well as those of some accommodatingly unscrupulous banks offshore.

Whatever the precise location of Burma’s riches, these hoards enable the junta to spend at its whim. A nuclear reactor, a new capital city, military pay increases — all of these and more have been on the menu of late. The one group that almost certainly will not benefit from any of the largesse is the Burmese people themselves, who are entitled to it and for whom it would mean an end to lives of poverty and want.

Sean Turnell is professor of economics at Macquarie University in Sydney. © 2008 Project Syndicate. www.project-syndicate.org

From Japan Times

 

Burma Fuels Thailand, Bangkok Post

Posted by: “Edith Mirante”

Tue Apr 8, 2008 1:10 pm (PDT)
April 8, Bangkok Post
Burma fuels Thailand

Natural gas exports to Thailand alone earned the country $2.7 billion,accounting for a 2007 trade surplus of $3.1 billion.

In 2007, Burma’s total trade hit an historic peak of $8.7 billion, splitinto 5.9 billion exports and 2.8 billion in imports, leaving the countrywith a trade surplus of $3.1 billion, said the Myanmar Times weekly, citing government officials.

Burma’s exports last year were driven primarily by natural gas, which earned the impoverished country $2.7 billion, or 45 per cent of its total exports.

“The major reason why Burma’s trade volume is increasing is the massive contribution form the energy sector – the export of natural gas to Thailand,” said Maung Maung, an economist and researcher from Economic Studies and Research Institute, the Union of Burma Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industries (UMFCCI).

Natural gas exports have risen dramatically since 2002, when Burma first opened a pipeline to deliver gas from offshore reserves in the Gulf of Martaban to Thailand.

“As a result, Burma has enjoyed consecutive trade surplus since 2002,” said Burma’s Commerce Minister Brigadier General Tin Naing Thein in a recent interview.

Besides natural gas, Burma’s main export items last year included agricultural products, amounting to $572 million in earnings, gems and jewellery to 561 million, and fishery products to 366 million.

The country’s main imports were fuel, which cost $471 million, followed by textiles at $276 million, palm oil at $251 million, machinery parts at $243 million, and automobiles at $192 million.

Most multilateral lenders such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank severed their programmes with Burma in 1988 following a brutal military crackdown on a pro-democracy movement that left more than 3,000 people dead.

The US forbade its private sector from investing in the country in the early 1990s, after the ruling junta refused to acknowledge the outcome of the 1990 general election, and the European Union has placed visa restrictions on the regime’s rulers.

US and EU sanctions were tightened after another crackdown on protesters in September, when a sudden doubling of fuel prices prompted demonstrators, led by Buddhist monks, to take to the street on Rangoon.

The latest incident left at least 31 dead, according to the official media. (dpa)

Edith Mirante is the author of Down the Rat Hole: Adventures Underground on Burma’s Frontiers and Burmese Looking Glass. The above article was first posted on her newsgroup burmaoil@yahoo.com

 

Burma and oil: Background piece by Dara O’Rourke

Oil in Burma Fueling Oppression http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1992/10/mm1092_06.html

by Dara O’Rourke

KNOWN TO HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS as “Asia’s new killing fields,” Burma is a country violently divided. The military regime which controls the country of 42 million is currently waging battles against more than a dozen ethnic insurgent groups and a student-led democracy movement. The regime, considered illegitimate by most countries in the world, faces international condemnation and pressure from the democratically elected government-in-exile to relinquish power.

The military regime, which calls itself the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), is relying on the exploitation of Burma’s natural resources to finance the military battles it is waging against its own people. In 1988, the regime “began to sell Burma’s natural resources like fast food,” according to the Burma Action Group, a British human rights organization. A main item on this menu is the sale of Burma’s oil reserves.

With the critical assistance of multinational oil corporations, the SLORC plans to significantly expand oil production in Burma over the next several years to generate foreign currency to purchase weapons. Between 70 and 90 percent of the profits from oil and gas development will go directly to the military regime. The Burma Rights Movement for Action, an opposition group based in Bangkok, Thailand, estimates oil exploration contracts have accounted for 65 percent of the foreign investment in Burma since 1988.

Michele Bohana, the director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Asian Democracy, asserts that “these foreign investments directly support the illegitimate military junta of Burma. The government is bankrupt. They have to get foreign exchange to survive.” Further, the SLORC is counting on the large presence of multinational corporations such as Amoco , Unocal , Texaco , Royal Dutch Shell , Petro-Canada and Idemitsu to gain international legitimacy and to fend off proposed international economic sanctions.

From crackdown to build-up

In 1988, the SLORC took control of Burma from long-standing leader General Ne Win, and changed the name of the country to Myanmar. However, rumors suggest that Ne Win continues to exert significant control over the SLORC and its policy decisions. During its coup and subsequent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, SLORC troops gunned down an estimated 4,000 students and other protestors.

Following the coup, foreign donors suspended $500 million per year in aid to Burma. The nearly bankrupt regime, which began to run out of money to finance its army, promised to hold free elections in 1990.

In the 1990 elections, the National League for Democracy, led by 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, won an overwhelming 81 percent of the popular vote. The SLORC received 2 percent of the parliamentary seats in the election. However, the SLORC annulled the election and imprisoned the victors, including Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest in Rangoon.

A small group of donors, including the International Development Association (IDA) of the World Bank , the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the United Nations Development Program and the Japanese government, reactivated their aid to SLORC following the election, arguing along with multinational business leaders that investment in Burma will speed development and eventually promote political liberalization.

The SLORC, in the meantime, continues to rule Burma by repressive military control. Military expenditures currently account for approximately 60 percent of the government budget. Arms purchases in 1991 amounted to approximately $1.4 billion. The military has grown by over 50 percent since the SLORC took power, from 190,000 to approximately 300,000 troops.

Most governments around the world, as well as human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Asia Watch, condemn the regime and the repressive human rights conditions that are regularly reported within the country. The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights reports that Burma’s citizens are “subject to unlawful arrest, detention without trial and torture for exercising their rights to expression and association,” and have recently been “forced to serve as porters for the Burmese army, where they are used as human mine detectors.” A number of countries have proposed a United Nations embargo, as well as other economic sanctions to force the SLORC to honor basic human rights accords and the results of the 1990 elections.

However, while leaders of many countries such as the United States and Canada officially oppose the actions of the SLORC, they continue to allow multinational corporations based in their countries to operate and invest in Burma, buoying the unstable and financially strapped regime. Multinational oil companies based in the United States, Canada, England, Japan and Australia have directly invested over $400 million in Burma since 1989. And critics say that the SLORC is using its greatly expanded foreign currency reserves to modernize and expand its army rather than to benefit the people. “Despite the influx of foreign money, the lives [sic] of the average citizen of Burma has not improved,” contends the Burma Rights Movement for Action. “Instead, it has steadily gotten worse.”

Natural resource auction

The SLORC leadership has apparently decided that exploiting natural resources is the best means of developing the country. Current SLORC practices regarding timber, minerals, fishing rights and oil concessions indicate sales of these resources are the primary strategy for raising funds.

When the SLORC took control of Burma, the country was estimated to have had 80 percent of the worldÆs remaining teak forests. During the last three years, however, the SLORC has sold expansive concessions of teak and other hardwoods to Thai timber companies for clear-cutting. In 1990, the United Nations estimated that 1,235,000 acres of tree cover were disappearing every year in Burma due to clear-cutting practices. The World Watch Institute estimates forest-cutting in Burma at over 2 million acres per year.

Burma has large mineral reserves of tin, tungsten, copper, lead and zinc, as well as deposits of precious stones such as jade, rubies and sapphires. SLORC has been selling the rights to mine these gems throughout Burma. Insight Indochina reported in 1991 that the SLORC had set a goal of producing 49,200 ounces of gold in 1992. This is a 1,130 percent increase over 1990’s production of 4,000 ounces.

One of BurmaÆs most famous resources is opium, which is converted into heroin for sale on the international market. A number of groups, including Green November 32, an environmental and human rights group based in Bangkok, Thailand, have alleged that SLORC leaders are involved in the illicit heroin trade, with some funds going directly to weapons purchases. David Todd, a Canadian journalist, reported in the Ottawa Citizen that “Western intelligence agencies say [an arms deal with China was] paid for in part with the proceeds from heroin and opium trafficking in which Myanmar military authorities are deeply involved.”

The SLORC, however, is focusing its efforts on oil and gas development. Because of a lack of foreign exchange, Burma has had a policy restricting the import of oil, thus creating a serious shortage throughout the country. Oil development is thus meant to alleviate the energy shortages throughout the country, as well as raise foreign currency.

Multinational oil companies move in

All oil and gas development in Burma is controlled by the military-run Myanmar Oil & Gas Enterprise (MOGE). Despite financial and technical support from Japan over the last decade, Burma has experienced a steady decline in oil and gas output, from a level of 30,000 barrels per day in the late 1970s to around 12,000 barrels per day in 1991.

In 1988, due to worsening economic conditions and the precipitous decline in oil production, the SLORC moved to end its isolationist policies and attract foreign oil investment. As part of this move, the government reversed a 26-year policy banning foreign participation in onshore oil exploration and development, and signed contracts with nine foreign oil companies.

The nine multinational oil companies that signed the first contracts with the SLORC in 1989 included Amoco (United States), Unocal (United States), Idemitsu (Japan), Royal Dutch Shell (Netherlands/United Kingdom), Yukong Oil (South Korea), Broken Hill Petroleum (Australia), Petro Canada (Canada), Croft Exploration (United Kingdom) and Kirkland Resources (United Kingdom). These firms were reported to have paid between $5 million and $8 million each in signing bonuses to the Burmese regime.

Since 1989, a number of other companies have also signed contracts with the SLORC. These include Premier Oil (United Kingdom), Nippon Oil Exploration (Japan), ELF (France), Petronas (Malaysia), and most recently International Petroleum Corp. (Canada), Apache Oil (United States), Tyndall International (United States) and Texaco (United States).

By the summer of 1991, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review, oil companies spent an estimated US$415 million on exploitation efforts, hoping to cash in on the SLORC-granted oil concessions. Bohana explains, “the oil companies haven’t lifted a drop of oil yet, but they have thrown hundreds of millions of dollars into the hands of the SLORC.”

Amoco’s contract to explore the Block B concession, a 33,000 square kilometer tract located in the Upper Chinwin basin in northern Burma, included an initial payment of $5 million to the SLORC as a signing bonus. Amoco has worked very hard to foster good relations with the SLORC. The chair of Amoco, H. Laurence Fuller, traveled to Burma personally in 1990 to meet with the SLORC head, General Saw Maung. Jim Fair of Amoco says that the company drilled one well in 1992, and “did not find hydrocarbons in commercial quantities.” According to Fair, Amoco is currently “evaluating whether [the company] will continue in Burma, period.” Amoco continues to keep an office open in Rangoon, the capital city.

Unocal has been working in the Block F concession, and has entered a joint venture agreement to explore the Block E concession, both of which are located in central Burma. Unocal is reported to have agreed to invest $29 million over the three years of its contract. However, in response to high exploration costs and three failed oil wells, Russ Small of Unocal says that the company is “planning to pull out of Myanmar at the end of 1992,” when its contract expires. “Three years, three wells, youÆre out,” Small says. Unocal has not officially announced this decision.

Texaco, the newest entry into Burma, recently bought into three different concessions, one onshore and two offshore, without any public announcement. Onshore, Texaco purchased a 42 percent stake in Block I, the concession held by Croft Exploration and Clyde Petroleum. Offshore, Texaco acquired a 50 percent interest from Premier Oil in two blocks covering 7.9 million acres in the Gulf of Mataban. After uncovering TexacoÆs quiet move into Burma, Green November 32, released a statement, charging, “Texaco does not want its financial involvement with – and therefore tacit support of – the brutal SLORC military regime to be known, as it may make it a target for boycott action.”

In 1989, Petro-Canada signed a $22 million oil exploration contract for the Block E concession with the SLORC, including an initial $6 million signing payment. Petro- Canada is the 80 percent state-owned oil company of Canada. While the Canadian government has repeatedly condemned the actions of the SLORC, the government claims it cannot influence the decisions of its own oil company.

A number of human rights and environmental groups have called on the Canadian government to pull Petro-Canada out of Burma. The Canadian environmental group Friends of the Rainforest has organized a boycott of Petro-Canada because, it charges, “up to 90 percent of any oil and gas production goes to the military regime.” Friends of the Rainforest also argues that “oil investment dollars are helping turn mainland Asia’s last significant forested region into a wasteland. Petro-Canada must share responsibility, along with [the company's] principal shareholder, the Government of Canada.”

Royal Dutch Shell is exploring the Block G concession, which includes over 19,000 square kilometers in central Burma. Earlier this year, Shell became the first multinational to discover recoverable quantities of oil or gas. The company found large natural gas reserves at Ahpyauk, 80 kilometers north of Rangoon. Shell and SLORC plan to bring the well into production as quickly as possible at a rate of 20 million cubic feet per day. A Bangkok newspaper quoted Pe Kyi, engineering director for the MOGE, as saying that SLORC was “very happy” about Shell’s find, and promised many more wells would be drilled in the near future.

Yukong Oil, Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP) and Kirkland have all been unsuccessful in their oil exploration efforts. Yukong spent more than $20 million without completing its first spud. BHP spudded a dry well in 1991. And Kirkland was reported to be considering pulling out of Burma at the end of 1991, after two years of unsuccessful exploration in a war-torn area close to the Thai border.

Natural gas exploration has increased onshore as well as offshore. A subsidiary of the Thai national oil company, PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP), has proposed a $2 to $3 billion project to explore for natural gas in Burma’s Gulf of Mataban. The project would pump the estimated 3.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves in Mataban through a 500-kilometer undersea pipeline from Burma to Kanchanaburi province in Thailand. This pipeline would require extensive military protection, as it would pass through areas currently held by Karen and Mon rebels.

The French oil giant Total signed an agreement with the MOGE in July 1992 to develop natural gas in two offshore blocks in the Gulf of Mataban covering an area of 26,000 square kilometers. Total plans to work with PTTEP to develop the concessions and feed the natural gas into the proposed pipeline. MOGE chose Total over two other western multinationals, Royal Dutch Shell and Unocal, in negotiations which lasted over a year.

Most of the actual work in Burma is not performed by these oil giants, but is instead farmed out to smaller multinational oil service and support firms. These smaller companies are performing geophysical testing, cutting roads, building helipads, drilling test wells and providing other support for the controlling oil firms. Some of the largest of these firms include Parker Drilling Co. (United States), Compagnie General de Geophysique (France), Geophysical Company Limited (France/United States), which is owned by Schlumberger, Halliburton Geophysical Services (United States), Grant Norpac (United States), Heavilift (Australia), Columbia (United States), PAE Singapore (United States) and Seismograph Services Ltd. (United Kingdom) which is owned by Raytheon, a U.S. defense contractor.

Oil and the environment

Burma is a country with particularly rough terrain, and almost no infrastructure to support oil exploration and production. Most of the areas where oil exploration is proceeding remain inaccessible by roads. Heavy equipment is shipped up rivers during the monsoon season, and then used after the monsoons have passed. Many activities require the use of helicopters to by-pass the roads and rivers. Forests must thus be cleared to open areas for helipads, base camps, testing sites and roads.

Testing involves the use of gravity and seismic lines. Companies clear one-to-four- meter-wide paths one kilometer apart, in a series of grid lines, and lay 10-pound dynamite charges every 100 to 150 meters. Cables with seismic meters are placed along the grid lines and when the charges are detonated, readings are taken and analyzed.

The companies are cutting roads by hand or with bulldozers through virgin tropical forests in order to lay the grid lines. Green November 32 alleges Compagnie General de Geophysique has been cutting roads “with the use of forced labor in the Kirkland block,” which is in a militarily contested area in southern Burma.

Environmental impacts of the oil exploration include the significant deforestation necessary to access areas for seismic testing, and for the construction of helipads. Once roads are constructed into these areas, deforestation follows. Green November 32 claims that “SLORC officials have arranged the granting of timber concessions to favorites in areas of virgin forest newly opened up by the oil companies.” Constructing roads also allows the military to move soldiers, heavy artillery and supplies into opened areas, thus securing their hold over the indigenous populations.

Other environmental impacts of the exploration include large-scale erosion around areas which are cleared, exploded with dynamite and drilled. Flash floods occur in deforested areas during the rainy season. Pollution of streams and rivers with mud and silt from the exploration process is common. Disruption of wildlife around the areas being explored is unavoidable due to the explosions, chainsaws and helicopters.

Amoco and Unocal officials interviewed for this article claim their operations have no detrimental environmental impacts. AmocoÆs Fair says the company has “assessed environmental impacts all along the way,” and all of their drill sites “return to their natural state very quickly.” Bohana of the Institute for Asian Democracy disagrees, however, saying, “Teak and hardwood cutting is currently more environmentally destructive, but long-term environmental destruction will result from oil development.”

Oil and human rights

Human rights groups argue that oil development has direct impacts on the people of Burma. A Green November 32 statement notes, “recent reports from inside Burma indicate that human rights violations are being perpetrated by the SLORC army in association with the oil companiesÆ planned and actual activities. Genocidal offensives are being carried out as part of the junta’s efforts to clear potential oil bearing areas of their indigenous inhabitants. … Tens of thousands of Burmese people are being forced to labor on roads for less than subsistence wages for the benefit of the oil multinationals and the junta.”

Because a number of battles are being waged on different fronts throughout Burma, there is also some conjecture about the areas which the SLORC is fighting hardest to control. Green November 32 reports, “SLORC troops have been particularly active in oil concession areas, and have launched heavy offensives in areas where concessions have been offered but not sold, such as the Kachin and Arakan States. There have been very serious human rights abuses perpetrated on local populations in association with these attempts to control the potentially oil-bearing zones.”

Sanctimony vs. sanctions

Pro-democracy groups complain that Western governments are unwilling to back up their rhetorical condemnation of the military regime in Burma with economic sanctions. These groups argue that ending oil exploration and development in Burma by multinational corporations may be the most effective means of forcing the regime to acknowledge the result of the 1990 elections, and to restore human rights and democracy to Burma.

But as a Green November 32 statement explains, “When a multinational oil company with the financial and political influence of Texaco invests in a country like Burma, it makes it substantially more difficult to effectively pressure a government led by someone like George Bush … into applying the sanctions that have been repeatedly and loudly called for. Obviously sanctions would not be good for those U.S. oil companies – Texaco, Amoco, Unocal, Tyndall, and Apache – that have invested so many millions of dollars in their relationship with the SLORC regime.”

Multinational oil development remains key to the SLORC’s expansion of the military, and control over the people of Burma. Without foreign exchange from oil investments, the regime would be much more dependent on foreign aid, which is often tied to political reforms.

Until some form of international trade or investment sanctions are passed by the United Nations or individual countries such as the United States, however, multinational oil companies will continue to fuel Burma’s military machine.

 

Efficiency of free market capitalism cruel

Worshipping the god of capitalism has led to the worst banking disaster in the U.S. since the Great Depression of the 1930’s.  The priests of the Holy Church of the Free Market have been tearing down government oversight of  the U.S. financial system since the Reagan Administration; this along with the unleashed greed that always seems to accompany Republican administrations, not to mention Republican control of Congress, has resulted in a credit crisis that is threatening the global economic system.  Who knows when the dominoes will stop falling, but it appears the already shrinking middle class will not escape the coming discomfort.

Colliding with and adding to the woes of the credit crunch for the U.S. and other advanced (capitalized) economies, the realities of peak oil are placing the  world’s poor at risk of starvation.  This is a direct result of free market capitalism.  The increasing demand for biofuel in wealthy nations has led to increasing amounts of agricultural land being devoted to biofuel crops all over the world.  The free play of the market means that the wealthy are able pay more for biofuel crops than the poor are able to pay for food crops.  The result has been a decrease in the supply of basic food crops worldwide.  This increases food prices globally.  The rich complain, but the poor simply cannot buy at these higher prices.

The diminishing supplies worldwide of transportation fuel, even with biofuel supplementation, along with increasing demand for same is adding to the heretofore hidden transportation costs of food commodities.

What this means is that the wealthy and middle class are taking food out of the mouths of hungry poor people everytime we buy gasoline for our automobiles.  This inherent cruelty of capitalism’s efficient engine of wealth creation is nothing new.  But in today’s wired world  it is simply more obvious.  So what are we going to do?  Are we going to keep buying those SUV’s.  Are we going to keep driving them to church?

 

Diesel costs increase in Burma; food, transport costs rise also

Transport and commodity costs hit by diesel price rise

Apr 3, 2008 (DVB)–The price of diesel has gone up by about 1000 kyat per gallon, causing a rise in the cost of transportation and basic commodities, according to a Rangoon resident.

Diesel previously cost less than 5000 kyat per gallon, but has increased to 6000 kyat and may be higher elsewhere, the resident said. “It seems like it’s going to keep going up to more than 6000 kyat,” he said. “I think it will be more expensive in Moulmein, because the fuel price there is already about 500 kyat more than in Rangoon, so it would be about 6500 kyat there now.” The knock-on effect of the price increase has been a rise in the cost of transport and basic commodities. “It costs around 3000 or 4000 kyat to travel from South Okkalapa township to downtown,” the Rangoon resident said. “People can’t even afford to pay for bus fares at this rate, let alone taxis.” The cost of rice has also risen as a result of the diesel price hike. Reporting by Maung Too, Democratic Voice of Burma

 

Total & Kouchner see eye to eye on Burma – Oliver Dours

March 25, Bakchich.info
Posted by: Edith Mirante

maje@hevanet.com emirante

Wed Mar 26, 2008 8:58 pm (PDT)

In Asia, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs never misses a chance to lend a hand to his pals at Total, who are getting bogged down in the Buddhist monks’ rebellion.

Total’s CEO, Christophe de Margerie, is determined to protect his company’s assets in Burma. On October 16, 2007, he rambled somewhat senselessly before the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Commission. In answer to a question put by Commission Chair Axel Poniatowski, de Margerie claimed that neither Aung San Suu Kyi nor representatives of the Burmese opposition had ever, “asked Total to leave.” He also boasted about the “opinion shared by a great number of people on the spot (i.e. in Burma) as well as all of the eyewitnesses who have been there, that Total’s activities are essential, and should be sustained in the interests of the Burmese people, for whom they are directly beneficial.”

Bizarre notions that the Burmese Prime Minister-in-exile, Dr. Sein Win, and his UN representative, Than Htun were quick to dispel during their recent stay in Paris, late last October. In actual fact, as far back as 1992, Burmese pro-democracy forces asked Total to abandon its project for a natural-gas pipeline from Burma to Thailand to produce electricity. To make matters worse, since it was put into service in 2000, they have never stopped pleading for the suspension of this financial windfall, which has
already brought in some $3 billion to the Burmese generals’ regime. For the opposition, it is abundantly clear that Total has been indeed been essential… to the change in the junta’s status on the international scene, from disreputable “narco-dictatorship” to the more presentable “gas-pipeline-dictatorship.” At a press conference in Paris last
October, Messrs. Sein Win and Than Htun expressed surprise that the letter they had
addressed to the French government just before the meeting of the European Council in Luxembourg on October 8 had not been taken into account. In it, the Burmese government-in-exile requested the establishment of effective sanctions – which inevitably meant seizure or international control of natural-gas revenues. In actual fact, the European Ministers made haste to exclude fossil fuels from the scope of the sanctions. Decision which can surely be blamed on pressure from the French.

When asked, “Who is your leader ?”, certain monks have been known to confess under torture, “His name is Siddhartha.” As the agitator’s identity and description was passed through the ranks of the uniformed hierarchy, in order to establish a warrant for his arrest anywhere in the country, one officer – slightly cleverer than the rest – realized that Siddhartha is the name of the historical Buddha born 2,500 years ago in
Kapilavastu, now part of Nepal…

To console his woes, Christophe de Margerie can always go sob on Bernard Kouchner’s shoulders : after all, once upon a time, the high-spirited French Minister of Foreign Affairs was a consultant for Total-Burma. This week, the French doctor performed a strange belly dance in a neighboringcountry he was visiting. In Singapore on October 29, he came up with another suggestion based more on smoke and mirrors than true substance : a funding project for Burma that would allow the international community to finance micro-credits to assist the country’s development, on condition that the junta become more democratic. All under the auspices of the World Bank… which can no longer operate in Burma since the Americans vetoed it.

On October 30, 2007, in Bangkok, Kouchner laid it on even thicker by singing the praises of Total’s pipeline, which, he said, was beneficial for the people of Burma and Thailand. And again, on October 31 in Beijing, he tried to sweet talk Chinese leaders – to get them to reason with their Burmese protégés – by offhandedly mentioning that French president Nicolas Sarkozy could be convinced not to receive the Dalai Lama during his planned visit to Paris in August 2008. Unlike a certain George W. Bush. During his visit to Beijing in December 2007, President Sarkozy asked his Chinese counterpart to intercede with his Burmese protégés in order to have visas granted to Bernard Kouchner and Rama Yade, his Secretary of Human Rights –raising snickers in diplomatic circles around the region, but otherwise to no avail…

Translated by: Regan Kramer

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EarthRights International has an open letter to the CEO of Chevron,
Dave O’Reilly, and a petition to him, regarding the brutal crackdown on
peaceful protests in Burma:
The Petition to sign is here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/urgeChev/petition.html