As Myanmar’s generals look for revenues to prop up their new dictatorship following the February 1 coup, there’s one source of money they can count on: natural gas projects backed by foreign investors including France’s Total and Chevron of the US, South Korea’s Posco and Malaysia’s Petronas.
Now, international civil society is building pressure on multinational corporations to resist from providing financial support to the Myanmar military regime.
The Myanmar military receives about half of its funding from oil and gas revenues. Cutting this flow of blood money from the oil companies Chevron, Total, and Posco is crucial to ending the army’s reign of terror. This is also fundamental to what No Business with Genocide strives to do.
Myanmar earns close to US$1 billion a year from natural gas sales. Much of this money flows through Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), a state-owned enterprise with deep links to the military’s business empire.
Alarmingly, the recent military coup places MOGE and the rest of the government under direct military control. Chevron is the largest U.S. corporate investor in Burma (Myanmar).
In partnership with Total of France, PTT of Thailand, and the Burmese government-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), Chevron owns the Yadana gas field and pipeline. Yadana is one of the military’s largest sources of revenue, bankrolling up to 70 percent of its operations in years past.
Moreover, Chevron has long used its powerful and sophisticated lobbying machine to block US sanctions on the Myanmar military. Chevron’s lobbying is a significant assist to Myanmar’s military, which has little to no presence of its own in Washington.
On April 27th, 2021, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, led by Jeff Merkley (D, Oregon) and Marco Rubio (R, Florida) called on the Biden Administration to stop money from flowing from American businesses to the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE).
The people of Myanmar have mobilized against the military coup through a campaign of civil disobedience, boycotts of military-owned companies, and pressure on foreign companies – such as Chevron, Total, and Posco – to stop supporting the Junta. Now, more than ever, let’s pressure Chevron until it stops bankrolling the Myanmar military.
