A year after the coup, the oil company TotalEnergies will leave Burma. The French giant and the American juggernaut Chevron announced on Friday their withdrawal from a country where they were partners in the Yadana gas field, a pressing demand from human rights NGOs following the military coup.
A year after the February 1, 2021 putsch that overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi and ended a 10-year democratic parenthesis, the country remains plunged into chaos. But foreign companies having left Burma remain rare despite the appeal of NGOs in the face of the bloody repression of the protest and the warnings of experts.
Chevron and TotalEnergie on the same wavelength
“The context which continues to deteriorate in Myanmar, in terms of human rights (…) has led us to reassess the situation”, explained the French group in a press release.
Chevron followed suit: “we have reassessed our interest in the Yadana natural gas project to allow for a planned and orderly transition that will lead to a withdrawal from the country,” said a spokesman for the American major, Cameron. Van Ast.
The process of withdrawal from the Yadana field and the transport company MGTC was initiated “without any financial compensation for TotalEnergies”, according to the group, established since 1992 in the country in the gas sector alone where it employs more than 200 people. . The withdrawal will be effective in six months and the interests of TotalEnergies and the operations of the field will be divided between the remaining partners.
Other rare companies have already done the same
“Cutting the economic income of the junta is paramount to destroying the regime. Other companies must follow Total’s lead,” said opponent Naw Susanna Hla Hla Soe. The French group had paid around $176 million to the Burmese authorities in 2020, in the form of taxes and “production rights”. Human Rights Watch says natural gas projects are the country’s main source of foreign exchange earnings, amounting to more than $1 billion a year.
A few rare foreign companies had already packed up, including the Norwegian telecoms group Telenor, the British tobacco company BAT and the French renewable energy producer Voltalia. Others, like EDF, had suspended their activity or their orders (H & M, Benetton).
MP sentenced to death on Friday
At the same time, we learned that a junta court sentenced a former member of Aung San Suu Kyi’s party to the death penalty on Friday. Phyo Zeyar Thaw, a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD), arrested in November, was “sentenced to death today for violating the anti-terrorism law”, the military regime said in a statement.
Many NLD members have been arrested or are on the run since the putsch, but this is the first death sentence handed down to a former party deputy.