BP, Oil and War: a catalogue of pollution and corruption
FS | 21.04.2003 19:04
ALASKA
Alaska contains one of the world's last wilderness areas, currently protected in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge. Bush made oil drilling in the wilderness refuge the centerpiece of his proposed US energy policy. The refuge is still threatened with being opened up for oil drilling, which would also threaten the lives of the Gwich'in indigenous people of Alaska and Yukon and the free-ranging caribou that they rely on.
The 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline already runs through 344 miles of Alaska, and is subject to oil spills, pollution and ecosystem destruction.
BP is one of several oil companies which own the pipeline system (New York Times 26.11.02)
BP POLLUTION AND ACCIDENTS IN ALASKA
BP was fined in connection with an oil well explosion that seriously injured a worker. BP publicly accepted responsibility for the accident, which is one of several fatal or severe accidents to its Alaska staff in 2002.
BP has been on probation since 2000, after it pleaded guilty to delaying notification to federal agencies about allegations of illegal disposal of hazardous waste in Alaska (Financial Times 1.02.03)
Reuters 18.04.02
BP has launched a costly marketing campaign to disassociate itself from the oil industry's reputation for despoiling natural habitats. But its dominant position in Alaska has left its claim on the ethical high ground open to attack. "If BP doesn't live up to its image, if it doesn't distinguish itself from its peers, it may find a lot of investors disinvest," said Shelley Alper, Assistant Vice President of Trilliam Asset Management, which manages 700 million dollards in socially responsible funds.
WEST PAPUA
(Background from Survival International booklet Siberia to Sarawak: Tribal peoples of Asia pp.20-27)
West Papua, claimed by Indonesia in a UN deal in 1963, is home to hundreds of indigenous 'tribal' groups and diverse ecosystems, from mangroves to rainforests. The Indonesian government has a programme of transmigration aiming to move millions from overcrowded Indonesia to Papua; this programme has a racist agenda to 'Indonesianise' the tribal peoples of Papua.
The Indonesian military has a long and shocking history of horrific human rights violations against the Papuans - including murder, rape, massacres and torture. 'Operation Annihilation', launched in 1977, was a violent attack against peoples of the central highlands. The military bombed villages from planes and shot people at random. Tribal leaders sympathetic to the Free Papua Movement were dropped out of helicopters over tribal villages as an 'example'. Repression of indigenous people by the military continues, with evidence of rape, murder, abduction, torture and death by hunger and disease for those too scared to leave their hiding places.
In total an estimated 100,000 Papuans have been killed by the Indonesian armed forces since 1963. The natural resources on which they depend have already been polluted, flood and depleted by the exploitation of copper and gold in mines owned by a US company and by British company Rio Tinto.
Now BP plans a project to extract gas in Tangguh, in a project that would damage the local shrimp-fishing economy, threaten the untouched bay containing possibly the world's largest mangrove forest, and bring in 5000 Indonesian workers.
BP WARNED OF RISK TO HUMAN RIGHTS AND ECOSYSTEMS IN INDONESIA
BP has been warned by a panel of experts that it could trigger human rights abuses if it proceeds with a 2 billion dollar gas scheme in West Papua.
If the scheme goes ahead, it would damage the local economy, based on shrimp fishing in a large untouched bay containing possibly the world's largest mangrove forest; risk human rights abuses by the military who are likely to be brought in to guard the project; and threaten indigenous people with disease from the 5000 Indonesian workers likely to be brought in.
The panel was established by BP in 2002 in an attempt to avoid the difficulties that closed Exxon/Mobil's operations in Aceh province. (Guardian 12.03.03)
COLOMBIA
Colombia is an area of conflict where local people, including peasant farmers, are subject to the ravages of Plan Colombia, the guerrilla movements of FARC, and the right-wing death squads or paramilitaries. On top of this is the extraction of resources such as oil, which pollutes the surrounding land and water both through leakages and through guerrilla activity.
BP has been involved in two major pipelines through Colombia. These have wreaked havoc on local ecosystems and destroyed many farms along their routes.
The second, newest pipeline is owned by Ocensa, in which BP has a 15% stake. BP is responsible for obtaining environmental licences for the pipeline and for compensating farmers for the loss of land affected by the pipeline.
Farmers were originally told that they would receive compensation for a 12 metre strip of land. Devastation to the land has stretched over hundreds of metres.
Firstly the pipeline destroyed hundreds of water sources and brought on landslides, both of which ruined local farms over a wide area.
Secondly, after guerrillas became angry at the construction of the pipeline and the misery it caused local people, security was brought in and an exclusion zone was enforced 100 metres EACH SIDE of the pipeline. The military zone has forced many farmers to abandon their land and live in poverty in local towns.
BP has paid out compensation to 17 families, but others, offered less than £100 compensation, have rejected BP's offers and are holding out for claims worth a total of around £20 million. (Guardian 18.12.02)
BP is held to have responsibility because its Colombian subsidiary signed some of the original land-purchase contracts (Financial Times 18.04.02)
DEATH THREAT TO PEASANTS' LAWYER
Marta Hinestroza is a lawyer acting for peasant farmers who have had their livelihoods ruined by a pipeline part-owned by BP.
She and her colleagues have been threatened with assassination by paramilitary death squads. After four of her colleagues were assassinated, and her aunt shot in the head, Hinestroza fled, in 2002, to the UK, with the help of the London-based Colombia Solidarity Campaign. (Guardian 18.12.02) She has now been granted asylum and contines to work for justice for her peasant farmer clients in Colombia.
COLOMBIA MURDER CLAIM HITS BP
BP has been accused of involvement in the murder of a Colombian environmental regulator who was to blow the whistle on oil-company corruption.
BP operates a massive oil field in eastern Colombia, where a paramilitary death squad carried out the killing, in 1998, of Carlos Vargas, director of the Colombian environmental regulator, Corporinoquia.
Colombian government investigators have gathered evidence alleging that someone in BP's controversial security department contracted out the hit. BP security in Colombia is trained and directed by the Anglo-American corporate mercenary firm, Defence Systems (DSL).
BP has refused to reveal the names of security personal at the time of the murder.
BP PRESSURISED BY 'PANTOMIME' OF PROTESTS (Independent 19.04.02)
Investors controlling 11% of BP's shares yesterday voted against the board of directors and in support of a rebel resolution calling for BP to adopt a more transparent environmental policy. The resolution was moved by the World Wildlife Fund.
BP appeared to have had enough of the protest groups influencing the agenda of the AGM, and at one point the chairman of BP, Peter Sutherland, engaged in a shouting match with a campaigner against BP's actions in Colombia. (FT 19.04.02)
(Independent again) Protesters accused the company of everything from complicity in murder, to destroying the environment and contributing to the oppression of Tibet. Of particular concern is the wilderness of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, which is proposed to be opened to oil companies, including BP.
Alaska contains one of the world's last wilderness areas, currently protected in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge. Bush made oil drilling in the wilderness refuge the centerpiece of his proposed US energy policy. The refuge is still threatened with being opened up for oil drilling, which would also threaten the lives of the Gwich'in indigenous people of Alaska and Yukon and the free-ranging caribou that they rely on.
The 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline already runs through 344 miles of Alaska, and is subject to oil spills, pollution and ecosystem destruction.
BP is one of several oil companies which own the pipeline system (New York Times 26.11.02)
BP POLLUTION AND ACCIDENTS IN ALASKA
BP was fined in connection with an oil well explosion that seriously injured a worker. BP publicly accepted responsibility for the accident, which is one of several fatal or severe accidents to its Alaska staff in 2002.
BP has been on probation since 2000, after it pleaded guilty to delaying notification to federal agencies about allegations of illegal disposal of hazardous waste in Alaska (Financial Times 1.02.03)
Reuters 18.04.02
BP has launched a costly marketing campaign to disassociate itself from the oil industry's reputation for despoiling natural habitats. But its dominant position in Alaska has left its claim on the ethical high ground open to attack. "If BP doesn't live up to its image, if it doesn't distinguish itself from its peers, it may find a lot of investors disinvest," said Shelley Alper, Assistant Vice President of Trilliam Asset Management, which manages 700 million dollards in socially responsible funds.
WEST PAPUA
(Background from Survival International booklet Siberia to Sarawak: Tribal peoples of Asia pp.20-27)
West Papua, claimed by Indonesia in a UN deal in 1963, is home to hundreds of indigenous 'tribal' groups and diverse ecosystems, from mangroves to rainforests. The Indonesian government has a programme of transmigration aiming to move millions from overcrowded Indonesia to Papua; this programme has a racist agenda to 'Indonesianise' the tribal peoples of Papua.
The Indonesian military has a long and shocking history of horrific human rights violations against the Papuans - including murder, rape, massacres and torture. 'Operation Annihilation', launched in 1977, was a violent attack against peoples of the central highlands. The military bombed villages from planes and shot people at random. Tribal leaders sympathetic to the Free Papua Movement were dropped out of helicopters over tribal villages as an 'example'. Repression of indigenous people by the military continues, with evidence of rape, murder, abduction, torture and death by hunger and disease for those too scared to leave their hiding places.
In total an estimated 100,000 Papuans have been killed by the Indonesian armed forces since 1963. The natural resources on which they depend have already been polluted, flood and depleted by the exploitation of copper and gold in mines owned by a US company and by British company Rio Tinto.
Now BP plans a project to extract gas in Tangguh, in a project that would damage the local shrimp-fishing economy, threaten the untouched bay containing possibly the world's largest mangrove forest, and bring in 5000 Indonesian workers.
BP WARNED OF RISK TO HUMAN RIGHTS AND ECOSYSTEMS IN INDONESIA
BP has been warned by a panel of experts that it could trigger human rights abuses if it proceeds with a 2 billion dollar gas scheme in West Papua.
If the scheme goes ahead, it would damage the local economy, based on shrimp fishing in a large untouched bay containing possibly the world's largest mangrove forest; risk human rights abuses by the military who are likely to be brought in to guard the project; and threaten indigenous people with disease from the 5000 Indonesian workers likely to be brought in.
The panel was established by BP in 2002 in an attempt to avoid the difficulties that closed Exxon/Mobil's operations in Aceh province. (Guardian 12.03.03)
COLOMBIA
Colombia is an area of conflict where local people, including peasant farmers, are subject to the ravages of Plan Colombia, the guerrilla movements of FARC, and the right-wing death squads or paramilitaries. On top of this is the extraction of resources such as oil, which pollutes the surrounding land and water both through leakages and through guerrilla activity.
BP has been involved in two major pipelines through Colombia. These have wreaked havoc on local ecosystems and destroyed many farms along their routes.
The second, newest pipeline is owned by Ocensa, in which BP has a 15% stake. BP is responsible for obtaining environmental licences for the pipeline and for compensating farmers for the loss of land affected by the pipeline.
Farmers were originally told that they would receive compensation for a 12 metre strip of land. Devastation to the land has stretched over hundreds of metres.
Firstly the pipeline destroyed hundreds of water sources and brought on landslides, both of which ruined local farms over a wide area.
Secondly, after guerrillas became angry at the construction of the pipeline and the misery it caused local people, security was brought in and an exclusion zone was enforced 100 metres EACH SIDE of the pipeline. The military zone has forced many farmers to abandon their land and live in poverty in local towns.
BP has paid out compensation to 17 families, but others, offered less than £100 compensation, have rejected BP's offers and are holding out for claims worth a total of around £20 million. (Guardian 18.12.02)
BP is held to have responsibility because its Colombian subsidiary signed some of the original land-purchase contracts (Financial Times 18.04.02)
DEATH THREAT TO PEASANTS' LAWYER
Marta Hinestroza is a lawyer acting for peasant farmers who have had their livelihoods ruined by a pipeline part-owned by BP.
She and her colleagues have been threatened with assassination by paramilitary death squads. After four of her colleagues were assassinated, and her aunt shot in the head, Hinestroza fled, in 2002, to the UK, with the help of the London-based Colombia Solidarity Campaign. (Guardian 18.12.02) She has now been granted asylum and contines to work for justice for her peasant farmer clients in Colombia.
COLOMBIA MURDER CLAIM HITS BP
BP has been accused of involvement in the murder of a Colombian environmental regulator who was to blow the whistle on oil-company corruption.
BP operates a massive oil field in eastern Colombia, where a paramilitary death squad carried out the killing, in 1998, of Carlos Vargas, director of the Colombian environmental regulator, Corporinoquia.
Colombian government investigators have gathered evidence alleging that someone in BP's controversial security department contracted out the hit. BP security in Colombia is trained and directed by the Anglo-American corporate mercenary firm, Defence Systems (DSL).
BP has refused to reveal the names of security personal at the time of the murder.
BP PRESSURISED BY 'PANTOMIME' OF PROTESTS (Independent 19.04.02)
Investors controlling 11% of BP's shares yesterday voted against the board of directors and in support of a rebel resolution calling for BP to adopt a more transparent environmental policy. The resolution was moved by the World Wildlife Fund.
BP appeared to have had enough of the protest groups influencing the agenda of the AGM, and at one point the chairman of BP, Peter Sutherland, engaged in a shouting match with a campaigner against BP's actions in Colombia. (FT 19.04.02)
(Independent again) Protesters accused the company of everything from complicity in murder, to destroying the environment and contributing to the oppression of Tibet. Of particular concern is the wilderness of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, which is proposed to be opened to oil companies, including BP.
FS
