Crude investment: the case of the Yadana Pipeline in Burma

Abstract

Documentation about gross violations of human rights committed by the Burmese dictatorship against its own people has catapulted the formerly isolated Southeast Asian country onto the international stage. The condemnation of Burma's military junta by seven Nobel Prize winners, including Bishop Desmond Tutu, who has called Burma 'the South Africa of the nineties', challenges the way the world does business. The largest foreign investors in Burma-multinational oil companies like Unocol, Total, and ARCO-adamantly insist that their operations will benefit the Burmese people. Meanwhile, scholars and human rights activists contend that petrodollars only duel the brutal regime, contributing to widespread oppression. This article examines the position of multinational oil corporations within Burma's unique economic and political context through the dictatorship's most prominent foreign infrastructure project: Unocal and Total's Yadana natural gas pipeline. Careful scrutiny of the human and environmental impacts of this venture will reveal that foreign petroleum development does indeed play an inescapably oppressive role in Burma.