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BP's Million At the Expense of UK Taxpayers and Environment
6 October 2004
Responding to analysts' forecasts that oil giant BP will record £9 bn profits this year, Friends of the Earth today (Monday 4th) accused the oil giant of profiting at the expense of people, climate change and the UK tax payer. BP receives huge subsidies from the Government every year for its business exporting oil from some of the world's poorest countries to the West.
The controversial Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline [1] is just one example of a project led by BP in which 70 per cent of the project's costs have been borrowed through both private banks and public development banks. The project has been criticised by environmental and human rights groups for breaching international human rights law and damaging the environment.
But the project has been subsidised by the UK tax payer through loans provided by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Export Credit Guarantee Department (ECGD) [2]. Friends of the Earth is calling on the UK Government to stop subsidising fossil fuel projects through international financial institutions because of their impacts on people and the environment, and their contribution to climate change.
Friends of the Earth's International Financial Institutions Campaigner, who recently visited the pipeline site in Turkey, Hannah Ellis said:
"BP's predicted multi-billion pound profits are thanks to subsidies from the UK taxpayer and exploitation of communities and the environment around the world. In areas of Turkey, people are receiving a pittance for their farm land that has been expropriated by BP's Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline.BP shareholders and the UK Government should be ashamed of this state of affairs."
Notes
[1] For more information see www.bakuceyhan.org.uk/
[2] The BP led BTC Consortium have received, in loans, $300 million from the IFC; $300 million from the EBRD loan and $106million from the ECGD.
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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust
Last modified: Jun 2008
