Watching The World: Criticism mounts over Myanmar
Chinese, Indian, and South Korean firms have come under heavy criticism for their efforts to build infrastructure to carry oil and gas across Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
"Companies are ignoring widespread abuses and worsening civil war," said Wong Aung of the Shwe Gas Movement. "The investors should pull out now before the project blows up in their faces."
Wong spoke at the release of a report called Sold Out, which details the construction of a deepsea port, gas terminal, and oil transfer point in Myanmar's western Arakan State and the laying of 800 km of pipeline.
The report claims that China National Petroleum Corp. as well as companies from India, South Korea, and Myanmar are speeding ahead with construction despite outbreaks of armed conflict near the pipeline route.
Economic consequences
However, the report states that there are economic consequences as at least one pension fund has divested from South Korea's Daewoo International, the main developer of the natural gas fields, due to alleged abuses in the country.
"The Burma Army has launched offensives to clear ethnic resistance forces out of resource-rich areas in northern Kachin and Shan states since March 2011," the report states, adding that battles have left some 50,000 people displaced.
Sold Out claims that 33 army battalions are currently deployed along the pipeline corridor, naval patrols guard offshore construction, and a missile complex is being built next to the deepsea port.
The report also states that widespread land confiscation to make way for the pipeline corridor is leaving farmers jobless and fishing grounds are now off-limits, contributing to rising migration.
"Local people are able to secure only low-wage, temporary, and unsafe jobs on the project and are not able to complain about working conditions or wages without retribution," it says, claiming that 60 workers have been fired for demanding regular wages at the Onshore Gas Terminal site.
Failing economy
If used domestically, Sold Out claims, the natural gas would transform Myanmar's failing economy, addressing chronic energy shortages and unaffordable gasoline prices that led to uprisings in 2007.
Instead, the report says, Myanmar's natural gas will be exported and revenues from the sale of the gas—now estimated at $29 billion—will be "swallowed up by a fiscal black hole" that excludes gas revenues from the national budget.
As a result, the group is calling for the Shwe Gas and the China-Burma pipelines projects to be suspended and all financing frozen or divested.
It claims, "Genuine development can only be achieved when community rights and the environment are protected, affected peoples share in benefits, and transparency and accountability mechanisms are in place."
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