The French energy giant TotalEnergies, Total’s new name since May 2021, announced on Friday January 21 its withdrawal from Burma, where it was a partner and operator of the Yadana gas field. Shortly after, the major American oil group Chevron announced that it was making a similar decision regarding its own activities in the country ruled by the junta. This was a request from human rights NGOs after the military coup that took place in 2021.
“The context, which continues to deteriorate in Myanmar, in terms of human rights and more generally the rule of law, since the February 2021 coup has led us to reassess the situation and no longer allows TotalEnergies to ‘to make a sufficient positive contribution in this country’, said the group in a press release.
The withdrawal process “provided for in the contracts of the Yadana field and the MGTC transport company in Myanmar” is engaged “without any financial consideration for TotalEnergies”, specifies the energy giant, established for a long time in the country. It will be effective no later than the end of the six-month notice and “the interests of TotalEnergies will be divided between the current partners, unless they refuse”, while the operations will be taken over by one of them.
TotalEnergies is a 31.24% partner and operator of the Yadana field alongside the Americans Unocal-Chevron (28.26%), PTTEP (25.5%), a subsidiary of the Thai national energy company , and the Burmese state-owned company MOGE (15%). The French group also announced that it was already in talks with the Thai PTTEP, “the natural operator” to take over from TotalEnergies in Burma.
Nearly 1,500 civilians killed since the coup
the “shadow government” formed in response to the army coup welcomed Total’s decision, through its minister responsible for women and youth, Naw Susanna Hla Hla Soe. “This is a strong message sent to the military. Cutting the economic income of the junta is essential to destroy the regime”, she said.
The NGO Human Rights Watch welcomed an announcement “meaningful”, adding that foreign governments will not have “no more excuses to delay the imposition of targeted sanctions on the country’s gas and oil entities”. On Thursday, the NGO again called on the United States and the European Union to “impose essential measures to target the funds that finance the abusive regime of the junta” after receiving a letter from the Chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanné, supporting “the implementation of targeted sanctions”.
One year after the coup d’etat of 1er February 2021, which overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi and ended a ten-year democratic parenthesis, Burma remains in chaos. Anti-junta militias have taken up arms against the generals who are stifling the protest in blood, with nearly 1,500 civilians killed, according to a local human rights association.
Telenor and Voltalia before them
A few rare foreign companies had previously packed up, including the Norwegian telecoms group Telenor and the French renewable energy producer Voltalia, which had been present there since 2018. Others, such as EDF, had announced the suspension of their activities or their orders in the country.
TotalEnergies had already put an end to the development project for a new field, halted its drilling campaigns and suspended payments to shareholders of a gas pipeline, including a company controlled by the Burmese army. The French group, present in Burma since 1992, had paid around $230 million to the Burmese authorities in 2019, then around $176 million in 2020, in the form of taxes and “production rights”, according to its financial records.
To justify maintaining its presence, TotalEnergies has hitherto invoked the impossibility of “deprive Burmese and Thai people of electricity”, in particular half of the ten million inhabitants of the city of Rangoon, and had undertaken, in return for the taxes paid to the Burmese State, to finance NGOs for the defense of human rights in the country for the same amount.
The Yadana field produces around 6 billion cubic meters of gas per year, of which around 70% is exported to Thailand and 30% supplied to the Burmese national company MOGE for the domestic market.