Myanmar leapfrogs to oil independence through biofuels program - questions about human rights remain
The reclusive nation of Myanmar (Burma), which is governed by a ruthless military junta, hopes to replace all of its 40,000 barrels per day of conventional oil imports with a homegrown nut oil (jatropha) within three years. The military regime is implementing a large-scale biofuel program aimed at achieving oil independence.
"We've started from this year and within 3 years if we can grow it all over the country we expect we can maintain this level of demand," U Myint Oo, chief research officer for state firm Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise, told Reuters. He said that the potential biofuel was known locally as the "physic nut", and was similar to the jatropha plant. Jatropha embraces a family of about 175 succulents, shrubs and trees. One of those, Jatropha curcas, also called the physic nut, is traditionally used to produce non-edible oil for making candles and soap, and as an ingredient in the production of biodiesel.
"Demand is increasing because of infrastructure projects, such as hydro and fertiliser plants, so really we need 50,000 barrels per day but we have to be thrifty," he said. "The government is telling people that prices are rising and could reach $100 a barrel, so it is telling them not to use energy."
Burma's aims and implementation strategy in numbers (few official data are available):
The southeast Asian country of 50 million only produces 2,000 bpd of conventional crude but is a regional natural gas exporter. Civil society has objected heavily to Western involvement in Myanmar's natural gas projects, because the junta is accused of using forced labor during infrastructural works associated with gas exploration and production. But according to many NGOs and Burma watchdogs, other human rights abuses are rife as well, in other sectors: forced labor in agriculture and forestry, slave labor in road building and construction work, summary levied taxes as a punishment imposed on villages who do not raise enough laborers - the list goes on. On top of all this, the same regime is still waging a complex and underreported war against ethnic groups who are striving towards independence, with control over opium and heroin production as the hidden agenda for both parties.
The question is whether this military regime will now implement its biofuels program in a humane way. Jatropha cultivation is highly labor intensive and it is feared that Burma's government may use forced labor once again in establishing and operating the plantations. After all, the program foresees several hundred thousand hectares to be converted to biofuel plantations - a large, 'top-down' decision.
Moreover, instead of benefiting the poor's purse, the profits from the biofuels may end up in the hands of the same politico-economic elite that has been accused of plundering the country's resources. So even though Burma is potentially wealthy because of its vast natural resources, it is a nation kept living on the brink of bankruptcy by a corrupt regime that thrives on a purely utilitarian logic of filling its own pockets by whatever means available. Oddly enough, with high oil prices, biofuels may become just another means to do so. Instead of using bioenergy as a tool to introduce an energy paradigm based on bottom-up, democratic and distributed resource control, which benefits local people, the Burmese junta may prove that green fuels could just as well be used to sustain an opposite logic.
More information:
"We've started from this year and within 3 years if we can grow it all over the country we expect we can maintain this level of demand," U Myint Oo, chief research officer for state firm Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise, told Reuters. He said that the potential biofuel was known locally as the "physic nut", and was similar to the jatropha plant. Jatropha embraces a family of about 175 succulents, shrubs and trees. One of those, Jatropha curcas, also called the physic nut, is traditionally used to produce non-edible oil for making candles and soap, and as an ingredient in the production of biodiesel.
"Demand is increasing because of infrastructure projects, such as hydro and fertiliser plants, so really we need 50,000 barrels per day but we have to be thrifty," he said. "The government is telling people that prices are rising and could reach $100 a barrel, so it is telling them not to use energy."
Burma's aims and implementation strategy in numbers (few official data are available):
- to grow 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of jatropha curcas within three years, on centrally planned plantations
- to grow jatropha curcas on all major military batallion sites, with the resulting biodiesel to be used by the military
- to encourage individual rural villages to create protective hedges around their fields, using jatropha (as the plant is poisonous, it fends off grazing animals that may damage crops - it makes a good shrub for natural hedges)
- to involve so-called 'social issue groups' in 'planting campaigns' (this is where organised forced labor might come into play: These 'social issue groups' are reminiscent of the soviet 'sovchoz'; Burma's junta claims to be 'socialist', but it has lots of genuinly corporatist elements in its state organisation. Social issue groups have been used in the past by the regime as a means to exploit forced labor.)
The southeast Asian country of 50 million only produces 2,000 bpd of conventional crude but is a regional natural gas exporter. Civil society has objected heavily to Western involvement in Myanmar's natural gas projects, because the junta is accused of using forced labor during infrastructural works associated with gas exploration and production. But according to many NGOs and Burma watchdogs, other human rights abuses are rife as well, in other sectors: forced labor in agriculture and forestry, slave labor in road building and construction work, summary levied taxes as a punishment imposed on villages who do not raise enough laborers - the list goes on. On top of all this, the same regime is still waging a complex and underreported war against ethnic groups who are striving towards independence, with control over opium and heroin production as the hidden agenda for both parties.
The question is whether this military regime will now implement its biofuels program in a humane way. Jatropha cultivation is highly labor intensive and it is feared that Burma's government may use forced labor once again in establishing and operating the plantations. After all, the program foresees several hundred thousand hectares to be converted to biofuel plantations - a large, 'top-down' decision.
Moreover, instead of benefiting the poor's purse, the profits from the biofuels may end up in the hands of the same politico-economic elite that has been accused of plundering the country's resources. So even though Burma is potentially wealthy because of its vast natural resources, it is a nation kept living on the brink of bankruptcy by a corrupt regime that thrives on a purely utilitarian logic of filling its own pockets by whatever means available. Oddly enough, with high oil prices, biofuels may become just another means to do so. Instead of using bioenergy as a tool to introduce an energy paradigm based on bottom-up, democratic and distributed resource control, which benefits local people, the Burmese junta may prove that green fuels could just as well be used to sustain an opposite logic.
More information:
- Reuters (via The Scotsman): Myanmar aims to substitute oil imports with nuts - July 27, 2006
- The Irrawady (junta controlled newspaper): Thailand Looks to Burma for Increased Bio-fuel Production - August 9, 2006
- Castoroil.in: The Myanmar government plans to implement a project to grow castor bean plants on 50,000 acres in each of Myanmar’s nine military divisions for use as biofuel [Google cache]
- Human Rights Watch - Burma: An overview of human rights issues in Burma, together with news reports and briefing papers.
- BBC: Country profile Burma and Burma warned over forced labor - March 25, 2005
- Photo courtesy of Myanmar's government website: Myanmar Digest (14 January, 2006, middle of the page), caption: "Government has given directives to grow jatropha curcas for production of bio-diesel"
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