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Burma developing nuclear power, funded by multinational oil companies

how could Burma, Southeast Asia’s poorest country, possibly afford to finance a nuclear program? The answer involves the military regime’s partnerships with multinational companies, including some of the world’s largest and best known oil firms

Oil Companies Financing Nuclear Threat in Burma, Refusing Transparency, THE HUFFINGTON POST, Mathew Smith, June 10, 2010 , The world has a new nuclear threat on its hands; the first ever in Southeast Asia.According to a disturbing five-year study released Friday by the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), carried on Al Jazeera, and vetted by a nuclear scientist and former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the ruling military junta in Burma (Myanmar) is “mining uranium, converting it to uranium compounds for reactors and bombs, and is trying to build a reactor and or an enrichment plant that could only be useful for a bomb.”

This follows a UN report leaked last month claiming North Korea is exporting nuclear and ballistic missile technology to Burma using intermediaries, shell companies, and overseas criminal networks designed to circumvent UN sanctions against Pyongyang.

A key question underlies the scandal: how could Burma, Southeast Asia’s poorest country, possibly afford to finance a nuclear program?

The answer involves the military regime’s partnerships with multinational companies, including some of the world’s largest and best known oil firms from the US, France, Japan, China, India, Thailand and elsewhere…..the Yadana natural gas pipeline — operated by the French oil giant Total, with the American company Chevron, and the Thai company PTTEP — has generated nearly $8 billion dollars in gas sales since payments commenced just a decade ago. Transporting Burmese natural gas from the Andaman Sea across Burma to neighboring Thailand, ERI estimated that from 2000-2008, billions of dollars of that revenue went directly to Burma’s ruling junta, a claim the companies have never denied…………According to a defected senior junta member interviewed by DVB in the documentary that aired on Aljazeera last week, “when [the regime] got that [gas] money, they started the nuclear project.”……….

it appears both Chevron and Total would simply prefer to hide their payments to the world’s newest nuclear threat.

Matthew Smith: Oil Companies Financing Nuclear Threat in Burma, Refusing Transparency

June 11, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Burma, secrets,lies and civil liberties | antinuclear, enriched, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear weapons, uranium