CRUDE INVESTMENT - THE CASE OF THE YADANA PIPELINE IN BURMA

Documentation about gross violations of human rights committed by the Burmese dictatorship against Its own people has catapulted the formerl y isolated Southeast Asian country onto the international stage. The c ondemnation of Burma's military junta by seven Nobel Prize winners, in cluding Bishop Desmond Tutu, who has called Burma ''the South Africa o f the nineties,'' challenges the way the world does business. The larg est foreign investors in Burma--multinational oil companies like Unoca l, Total, and ARCO-adamantly insist that their operations will benefit the Burmese people. Meanwhile, scholars and human rights activists co ntend that petrodollars only fuel the brutal regime, contributing to w idespread oppression. This article examines the position of multinatio nal oil corporations within Burma's unique economic and political cont ext through the dictatorship's most prominent foreign infrastructure p roject: Unocal and Total's Yadana natural gas pipeline. Careful scruti ny of the human rand environmental impacts of this venture will reveal that foreign petroleum development does indeed play an inescapably op pressive rob in Burma.