In 1992, the French oil company Total signed the first contract with the Burmese military for the Yadana Project, which would develop offshore natural gas fields in the Andaman Sea and pipe the gas overland to Thailand. From the beginning, the contract provided that at least 50% of the profit would flow directly to the military regime, through the Myanmar Oil & Gas Enterprise (MOGE), an arm of the military’s Ministry of Energy; current estimates put the Burmese junta’s share of profits from gas sales at around 75% of total profits. Yadana was the largest foreign investment project in Burma’s history and has become the single largest source of hard currency for the junta.

The American oil company Unocal, which had competed with Total for the original Yadana contract, became a partner in the project shortly thereafter, in early 1993. It was subsequently joined in 1995 by PTT Exploration & Production (PTTEP), a subsidiary of Thailand’s state-owned oil and gas company, PTT, and later that year by MOGE itself, participating as a partner in the project as well as the regulator of the consortium. Total and Unocal ended up with the largest shares, at about 31.25% and 28.25% respectively, with PTTEP following at 25.5% and MOGE with 15%.

As the project progressed, the Yadana consortium signed a contract with the buyer of the gas, PTT, to build a pipeline from the offshore field to the Thai border, including a 60-kilometer (40-mile) section across southern Burma. During this period in the mid-1990s, reports from refugees and human rights workers in the region indicated that the pipeline area was experiencing a massive increase both in military presence and the human rights abuses that the Burmese military regularly commits. The pipeline security force was routinely conscripting villagers for severe forced labor projects, including building infrastructure for the project and portering heavy loads for military patrols, as well as committing torture, rape, and murder. These abuses were catalogued in EarthRights International’s first report on the Yadana Project, Total Denial, in 1996. The abuses continued as gas began to flow in 1998, and ERI has released several additional reports over the years documenting the harms (including the comprehensive Total Denial Continues, first released in 2000, updated and re-issued in 2003).

EarthRights International’s most recent report, The Human Cost of Energy: Chevron’s Continuing Role in Financing Oppression and Profiting From Human Rights Abuses in Military-Ruled Burma (Myanmar) [1], released in 2008, documents Chevron’s ongoing role in financing and profiting from the military regime in Burma. This is the first comprehensive report on conditions in the Yadana pipeline region since Chevron acquired Unocal’s interest in 2005, and documents the continued serious human rights violations by pipeline security forces, including forced labor, murder, rape and torture. The report also describes Chevron’s continuing legal liability associated with abuses in the pipeline region. (See ERI's Press Release on the report [2].) 

The influx of soldiers to the previously isolated region has also caused an increase in illegal hunting, logging, and wildlife trade. The Tenasserim region is one of the largest rainforest tracts left in mainland Southeast Asia, home to wild elephants, tigers, rhinos and great hornbills, to name just a few of the rare and important species that inhabit this region. It is also the home to numerous indigenous peoples, including the Mon, Karen, and Tavoyans. These peoples are experiencing the negative impacts of the environmental destruction as well as the human rights abuses that they must regularly suffer at the hands of the soldiers brought in to provide security for to the pipeline consortium partners, including Chevron and Total.

In addition to the human and environmental harms resulting from the Yadana pipeline, the project does little to benefit the Burmese economy or its people.