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Action Update
news
issue 87 january 2002
The Baku Ceyhan
Oil Pipeline
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey are being lined
up as the next ‘zone of sacrifice’ so that the West can continue
to use lots and lots of oil.
We have the oppportunity to stop this pipeline from being built.
It’s a bit like stopping the pollution and human rights abuses in
the Niger Delta before they happen.
How big? - pipeline statistics
- 1,750 km (1,087 miles) of planned pipeline
going through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, with a sister pipeline
to carry gas - the South Caucus Pipeline.
- to be built and managed by a consortium of
oil companies, led by BP, (who has by far the largest share in the pipeline
34.76% compared to the 25% of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan.)
BP is also managing the construction and the running of the pipeline
itself.
- 365 million barrels of oil per year would run
through the pipeline in its 40 year lifespan. When burnt these would
produce 177 million tonnes of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) each year.
This is:
- more than the pollution from every power station
in the UK (163 million tonnes CO2)
- far more than the pollution from every car,
truck, bus and train in the UK (125 million tonnes CO2)
- o twice as much as heating every house in the
UK (89 million tonnes CO2).
Environmental risks
1. Oil spills: There have been 17 serious earthquakes since 1921
along the proposed pipeline route. The pipeline is intended to be underground,
so does not have the flexibility of an above ground pipeline. This risks
a major oil spill. In Georgia the pipeline passes near the source for
the Borjomi mineral water plant, one of Georgia’s most significant
sources of foreign income. Oil spills from tankers leaving Ceyhan is also
a strong possiblitity.
2. Climate change: The pipeline will continue
to supply the West with fossil fuels; Oil at 365 million barrels a year,
Gas at 730 cubic metres a year. The amounts of CO2 resulting (see above)
equals 21/2 times the amount which the UK has pledged to cut under the
Kyoto protocol! Without this pipeline the oil would stay in the ground
as there is no other economic way to transport the oil from the Caspian
Sea to Western markets. Its simple, we stop the pipeline, the oil stays
in the ground.
MAI by the back door
- governmental contracts
Azerbaijan has signed a Production Sharing Agreement that allows BP whatever
land it requires for its operations, and it is unclear whether it binds
the company to national environmental protection laws. As this agreement
has the status of international law, it overrides national law, present
and future.
The BP-Turkey Host Government Agreement (HGA) is an aggressive neo-colonial
instrument which exempts the BP consortium from any obligations under
any current or future Turkish law that may threaten the project’s
profits, including environmental, social and human rights legislation.
Other provisions in the HGA include unfettered access to water, regardless
of the needs of local communities, and exemption from liability in the
event of an oil spill or any other harm caused by the pipeline consortium.
The agreement creates a corridor running through some of Turkey’s
most politically volatile regions, effectively outside the national government’s
jurisdiction.
Under the terms of the agreement Turkey has guaranteed the costs of its
section of the pipeline - a blank cheque to cover delays and overspends
which will likely amount to billions of dollars. BP has a history of maximising
its profits by demanding low taxes, in the North Sea, Alaska and Colombia.
This is the MAI and worse for these countries, a four kilometres, four
kilometer wide, 1,750 km long strip of BP-law.
Conflict escalation and human rights
abuses
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey a region of relative instability
have all been involved in serious conflicts in the past 20 years. The
pipeline will serve to escalate tension and militarisation in the countries
it passes though, as the OCENSA pipeline did in Colombia. The Turkish
section passes through regions where Kurds make up 40% of the population
– Kurds have been the victims of human rights abuses by Turkey for
many years, and the injection of arms and security forces into the region
could increase these abuses. The pipeline also risks becoming a target
for groups such as the Kurdish PKK. Although there has been a cease-fire
with the PKK for a number of years, the pipeline would be an obvious target.
Something similar happened in Colombia, when the FARC destroyed part of
the OCENSA pipeline.
It’s effect on the local people
Although an impact assesment has been carried out by ERM (environmental
management consultants, based in UK) it provided an incomplete picture
of the pipeline and did not allow discussion of whether the project should
exist in the first place. A fact-finding mission found that, of 20 villages
that ERM claimed to have consulted, 5 were not formally visited by the
company at any point! Fewer than one quarter of the sample of concerned
parties had been officially informed (not consulted even) about BTC. One
village, HaÀibayram, listed by BP as consulted by telephone, was
an abandoned wreck of shattered walls. See the spoof www.erm-concerns.com
to find out about the dirty work ERM does for BP.
As for compensation for land directly on the route, the
BTC consortium insists on setting up bank accounts in the names of those
that appear on the decades-old land registries. In doing so, BP will be
paying the dead, and depriving the living, their children and grandchildren,
of any cash. The Georgian government recently published a list of 32 questions
it wanted to ask BP about the implications of its choice of route. Pressure
to keep to the project’s timeline means that those questions will
now go unanswered. BP wrote to Georgia’s president instructing him
“to inform experts who visit with you ...that [alternative] routes
are unacceptable.” Following a subsequent visit by the US envoy to
the Caspian, Georgia approved the route. It seems that consultation for
BP, even at governmental level, is rather like the pipeline: everything
flows one way.
Then there’s the disruption from large camps of
imported workers to small towns and villages along the pipeline. Whilst
local people are promised that more work will come with the pipeline,
actually very few of the locals will be employed by BP, and even then
only during construction. Even if they are ‘lucky’ enough to
get a job, BP is very anti-union.
The pipeline will run through areas that are chronically
fuel poor - in Colombia this situation resulted in people siphoning off
the oil from the pipelines, even though this was very dangerous and resulted
in environmental degredation.
Public money funding the pipeline
The companies in the consortium want to personally finance only 30% of
the $3.3 billion cost of the oil pipeline. The remaining 70% would be
financed by banks and public finance institutions such as the International
Finance Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
These banks are funded by our taxes, and UK government representatives
sit on their boards. BP would also be looking for further taxpayer subsidies
in the form of national Export Credit Guarantees for components of the
project and whatever other hand-outs they can scam.
In November 1988, BP boss John Browne said that the pipeline
project would not be possible unless “‘free public money’
was offered to build the line” - stolen from us.
Geopolitics
If you thought that the good old US of A must have something to do with
this, then you’d be right. The whole momentum of the pipeline has
come from the US to avoid getting their oil from the unfriendly Middle
East, to cut Russia out of any possible deal, and to increase friendship
between them and the countries involved. It would be cheaper, and shorter,
to go through Iran or Russia with the oil from the largely untouched reservoirs
in the Caspian Sea. But the proposed route was decided upon for these
wider political ramifications. BP (now an anglo-American company since
they merged with, and then absorbed, Amoco) was lured in with the promise
of extending its historical links with Azerbaijani oil, and free public
money to cover the cost of this large, ineffecient, and uneconomic project.
The state of the pipeline
Construction has not yet started on the pipeline - it is still in BP’s
imagination. It is in the final ‘consulatation’ and financing
stages of the project, after 10 years of planning by the US and BP. We
must stop BP from getting the money - by delaying construction start time,
and discrediting the project in the eyes of international financiers,
Export Credit Guarantee Departments and the World Bank.
Oily hands
Who’s who in the pipeline?
Leaders of the consortium & overall managers of
the project
BP
UK Environmental management consultants
ERM
Financiers
Lazard Brothers
International Finance Corporation (a World Bank member)
the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
UK Export Credit Guarantee Department
What have people been doing about it?
www.risingtide.org.uk/pages/Baku/Baku.htm
Look at this address for info, news of actions and links to all the groups
involved in researching the pipeline and taking action.
‘Some Common Concerns -
Imagining BP’s Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey Pipelines System’ by
PLATFORM and others.
Details the proposals and imagines their effect. Info on companies and
government departments involved. Downloadable from the Rising Tide website.
www.bakuceyhan.org.uk
The Baku Ceyhan Campaign has brought together many different groups,
from the region in which the pipeline is planned, and in the UK.
www.bankwatch.org
Central and Eastern European Bankwatch are working against many mega
projects in the region, including this pipeline.
ERM occupation
London Rising Tide occupied the head offices of ERM in December, carrying
out on staff an “impact assessment of the occupation“. Check
it out on www.erm-concerns.com.
CBI Conference
BP’s stand at the CBI conference in Manchester got trashed with blood-red
paint over their slick corporate image.
What can you do?
Without public finance this project cannot go ahead. It is vital to put
pressure on those financing the pipeline, and on companies who are involved
in the project.
Read and act
‘Some Common Concerns’ is a book published last year by Platform
looking at the project and the people behind it. Oxford Rising Tide are
offering support in organising meetings about the pipeline. Ask them about
information, materials and a range of speakers on different aspects of
the pipeline project. info@risingtide.org.uk
or 01865 241097
Target BP graduate recruitment
see www.bpfutures.com
Baku – Ceyhan Teach-In, London, Sat 25th January
2003
Key issues in the morning, practical campaigning ideas in the afternoon.
We’ll be updating on the international campaigns, planning for existing
campaigning in the UK, and planning our next steps for our local areas.
Contact Oxford Rising Tide
BP AGM in April/May
And they do have a lot of petrol stations...
Back to Action Update 87
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