Word: texaco
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Although it has sold most of its interests in Ecuador, Texaco has not been content to leave the developing world alone. In 1991 it became the lead operator in a multinational consortium of oil companies searching for natural gas off the coast of Burma...
...Texaco has drilled several exploration wells in Burma's Gulf of Martaban and is planning a pipeline project to transport natural gas from the gulf across Burma into Thailand. Other oil companies--Unocal and the French company Total--are currently constructing a pipeline in the same area, and although Texaco will probably construct a new pipeline, it will run a similar route and use much of the infrastructure of the Total-Unocal project...
...like the Ecuadorian Amazon, the area of Burma across which the pipelines cut is biologically rich and home to many disenfranchised ethnic minority groups. The Tenasserim rain forest is the largest intact rain forest in southeast Asia, home to such endangered species as the white rhinoceros and the tiger. Texaco's track record in Ecuador demonstrates that the corporation is not likely to be a good environmental steward; no independent environmental impact assessments have been conducted in the pipeline region...
...order to pacify the area and allow the pipeline to go through, the SLORC has increased its military presence and forcibly relocated thousands of villagers. The SLORC is a partner in the Total-Unocal venture and retains the option of a stake in Texaco's consortium. U.N. Special Rapporteur Yozo Yokota made the connection between SLORC's presence and human rights abuses in 1995, stating that "forced labor, forced relocation, arbitrary killings, beatings, rapes, and confiscation of property by the SLORC are most commonly occurring in border areas where the Army is engaged in military operations or regional development projects...
...addition to the direct impacts of the pipeline, Texaco's investment will provide a large source of income to the SLORC, money that the regime desperately needs to sustain its bloated military. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese woman who has led the pro-democracy movement and won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, has explicitly called for an end to foreign investment in Burma until a democratic government is installed. Democratic elections were held in 1990, in which Suu Kyi's party won 82 percent of the parliamentary seats, but the military ignored them...