China Turns Mekong Into Oil-Shipping Route

As energy hungry China turns the ecologically fragile Mekong river into an oil-shipping route, green activists and environmentalists in South-east Asia worry that spillages could destroy the livelihoods of millions of people residing along the lower reaches of the region’s largest waterway.

‘’The whole deal was done in secrecy with no information released to the public or attempt to get the people’s views, especially those living along the Mekong River,” says Premrudee Daoroung, co-director of the Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance (TERRA) that is based in the Thail capital. ‘’This confirms who controls the Mekong.”
Fears of a possible oil spill have been fed by what environmentalists have noticed since ships began plying the Chiang Rai-Yunnan route, taking agriculture goods, such as garlic and apples. ‘’These cargo boats have been polluting the river and that is upsetting people living along the banks,” says Pianporn Deetes, campaigner for the South-east Asia Rivers Network, based in Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai.

China’s resort to the Mekong River as a new oil route comes as its demand for the energy source increases, with its annual oil imports estimated to be 140 million tons a year, and rising, according to available reports. Nearly 70 percent of these imports are shipped through the Malacca Straits, a channel in South-east Asia that has reached capacity levels.

What is more, China’s oil route along the Mekong River is one of two plans it unveiled in this region in its bid to avoid the Malacca Straits. Last April, Beijing inked a deal with Rangoon to build an oil pipeline linking Burma’s deep-water port of Sittwe to Kunming, Yunnan’s capital.

The planned pipeline has alarmed Burmese human rights and environmental groups for multiple reasons: the financial windfall that will help to prop up Rangoon’s oppressive military regime, the environmental damage the pipeline would cause and the human rights violations that it would leave in its wake.

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