Archived press release

Global call for moratorium on controversial bp pipeline

5 June 2003

Environment, rights groups in 29 countries lobby World Bank and Governments

More than 70 environment and human rights groups from 29 countries, today called for an immediate moratorium on a controversial BP oil pipeline, planned to run from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean.

Seventy two organisations have written to the major public funders of the pipeline project, arguing that the pipeline would worsen human rights problems along the pipeline route, and that a background of lack of freedom of speech in the region made proper consultation and land compensation impossible.

The call echoes the findings of a recent international fact-finding mission to the Turkish section of the pipeline, which found violations of international standards, and Turkish law, on consultation, compensation and resettlement - as well as human rights problems including detentions, arbitrary arrests and state harassment. The situation is especially bad in the northeast of Turkey, where 40% of the population is Kurdish. The fact-finding mission itself was detained twice by the state gendarmerie during the course of its research.

Kate Geary, of the Baku Ceyhan Campaign, commented:

"The persistent and ongoing denial by the Turkish state of Kurdish people's rights makes it impossible for this pipeline to be built in an acceptable way. The responsible thing for BP to do would be to call off the project, at least for as long as this remains the case".

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, led by UK oil giant BP, is designed to carry one million barrels of oil a day through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean coast, where it would be loaded onto tankers for export to western markets. BP and its partners are expected to request about half of the USD 3.3 billion cost of the project from public sources, what BP CEO Lord John Browne has called "free public money".

Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth said:

"This pipeline will hit the environment and local people hard, while benefiting only the profits of companies like BP. The fact-finding mission's report makes it clear that it cannot be built to international standards - so there is no justification for governments to fund the project".

Petr Hlobil of CEE Bankwatch Network added:

"The array of deficiencies in this project, combined with the abysmal human rights situation in the region, means that a moratorium on the project is now essential. We call on governments and international financial institutions not to consider financing the pipeline in the current climate".

The moratorium call is the latest in a series of problems for BP. Last month, the human rights impact of the pipeline was criticised in a legal report by Amnesty International, and in April groups submitted complaints to the governments of France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, charging that BP and its partners were violating the "Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises" of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The letter to the funding bodies can be found at: www.bankwatch.org/issues/oilclima/baku-ceyhan/mcorrespondence.html

Notes

1: The members of the Fact-Finding Mission included representatives of the Kurdish Human Rights Project, the Corner House, Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale and PLATFORM. The Mission's report is available at www.baku.org.uk/

2: Robert Corzine, "Wisdom of Baku pipeline queried", Financial Times, 4 November 1998, p.4

3: Amnesty International press release, 'Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline project puts human rights on the line', 20 May 2003, www.amnesty.org.uk/deliver?document=14542 Amnesty's report, 'Human Rights on the Line', argues that "Under the present framework of protocols and agreements that circumscribe the project, mechanisms for protecting human rights are being systematically undermined".

6: Friends of the Earth International press release, 'Groups file claim against BP and pipeline partners in 5 countries', 29 April 2003, www.foei.org/media/2003/0429.html

In their 9-page Complaint, the NGOs charged the Consortium with having:

• exerted undue influence on the regulatory framework for the project - the Consortium's legal team even boasting that it had "created laws" in Azerbaijan;

• sought or accepted exemptions related to social, labor, tax and environmental laws;

• pressured the Georgian environment minister to approve the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) despite the minister's protests that the EIA violates Georgian law; and

• undermined the host governments' ability to mitigate serious threats to the environment, human health and safety by, among other actions, negotiating agreements that free the pipeline project from any environmental, public health or other laws that the three host countries might adopt in the future.

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust