The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in Azerbaijan has had devastating impacts for local people. Community organizing has been essential to ensure that people’s rights are not abused as this pipeline continues to affect local livelihoods and health. Greengrants has supported several groups pressuring for accountability from the oil industry in Azerbaijan, including the Committee of Protection for Oil Workers (51-210) and the Center for Civic Initiatives (51-913 & 50-391).
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In May 2006, after $4 billion dollars spent and four years of construction, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline was officially inaugurated. Its implementation has been talked about since the early 1990s, and it has always been met with resistance from international and local grassroots groups. The pipeline was built in terrible working conditions and has created huge environmental and health problems. The compensation plans designed to offset the negative effects of the pipeline do not cover the damages created, and the policies have not been implemented correctly.
Called one of the biggest engineering projects of the new millennium, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline is the second longest oil pipeline in the world. Working at full capacity, it will pump over one million barrels of oil per day from the Caspian Sea into the Mediterranean. Its span of 1760 kilometers connects Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, and Ceyhan, a southern port city of Turkey.
Greengrants has supported several groups in Azerbaijan that have been opposed to the BTC project since its inception. Now that the BTC pipeline is operational, the Committee of Protection for Oil Workers and the Center for Civic Initiatives- Azerbaijan continue to protect the rights of the Azerbaijani (or Azeri) people and the environment they live in.
Health Concerns
There has been a long battle over health and environmental issues between BP, the majority shareholder of the BTC pipeline, and civil society in Azerbaijan. The former Soviet nation is still struggling with its independence, and many large corporations have been exploiting the dilapidated conditions of its workforce, knowing they can employ workers without regard for health and environmental regulations.
Grassroots groups have continually tried to voice their concerns with BP and the entire BTC Company. Most are small organizations, yet they continue to try to make their voice heard. The biggest concern, among health and humans rights activists alike, is the quality of the paint on the underground connections between the pipes, which could potentially crack and cause leakage of crude oil, creating catastrophic environmental problems.
BP, who shares ownership of the BTC Co. with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan and nine other oil companies from the US, Europe, and Japan, has acknowledged problems with the paint coating, although it says all problems were dealt with and solved in 2004. However, in January 2007, a leaked internal report said that the fix was not enough and the coating could still crack. (See full article here.) BP has done nothing so far in response to this new report.
The neglect of BP and the rest of the BTC Co. has created horrific problems within the local communities unable to resettle away from the pipeline. In Sangachal, a village two kilometers from the start of the pipeline, 35 children with birth defects have been born since the pipeline opened. Additionally, cancer rates have increased, according to activist Shakhla Tagiyeva. She blames these problems on the toxic nitric oxide gasses that the pipeline emits. (See full article here.)
In Turkey, which contains the majority of the pipeline, health and environmental problems are causing the greatest distress. The pipeline would prevent Turkey’s entrance into the European Union (EU), as it violates nine statues of the EU’s Environmental Impact Directive.Even though the BTC pipeline is severely hurting the Turkish economy, it continues to function and slowly exhaust all three countries it operates in.
Inappropriate Compensation
The largest problem created for the Azeri people by the BTC pipeline is the issue of compensation. Compensation problems with large development projects are always an issue, mostly one that is ignored. In some cases the pipeline will displace people from their lands and in others the farm land above the pipeline will become barren. To compensate for these losses, the BTC Co. has promised to distribute payments to those affected, but many have not yet been allocated.
The Center for Civil Initiatives, which Greengrants awarded a grant of $4,950 to in 2004, works with local villages affected by the BTC project. The Center has been engaged in a long battle with the BTC Co. over its compensation practices. They help those who continue to wait for their compensation payments, even three years after the pipeline construction ended.
The Center, which educates rural Azeri villages about how they can affect local and international issues, used Greengrants funding to examine government agreements containing the BTC compensation laws for domestic and international practices. They found that the agreements only had been translated into Azeri a few months before the pipeline completed construction.
Additionally, the language in the documents is confusing and too complicated for ordinary citizens to understand. Even if they could be understood, the documents have many contradictions and unclear points, created in a way to ensure that locals are unlikely to pursue their rights. Many have been forced into this path of passivity, with groups like the Center struggling to provide locals with the knowledge and the resources they need to take on the corporate giants behind the BTC pipeline.
Problems with the BTC compensation are not limited to Azerbaijan. In Georgia, Association “Green Alternative”(which Greengrants supported in 2004 to make the documentary “Working for the Oil” about the BTC pipeline, as well as a 2006 grant for $5,000 to support resistance to the Khudori Dam), found that compensation payments are too confusing to apply for, and too small when they are actually received.
The Center, which received another, more general grant of $3,400 in 2006 to continue their work against extractive industries, found that the compensation programs were unfairly executed. Authorities did not keep consistent records of which villages would receive compensation payments. In most cases, two different maps were created to determine who would receive compensations. One was constructed for the approval of the villagers and the other was constructed as the actual guideline for compensation. This second, falsified map did not include all areas inhabited by those who had been promised payments. Due to these second maps, many villages received no reparations, even though they had been told they would.
Monitoring and Exposing
To make sure large development projects like the BTC pipeline are constructed within the confines of the law and moral responsibility, they must be closely monitored. Without this monitoring, it is easy for large corporations and conglomerates like the BTC Co. to participate in massive human rights violations. In 2003, Greengrants supported the Committee of Protection for Oil Workers (CPOW) with a $6000 grant to monitor the BTC project and to write a report of their findings – the first official report about the pipeline’s negative impacts on local people.
CPOW has been working with oil workers since its creation in 2000 to “defend the constitutional rights of oil workers” in Azerbaijan, as laborers have few resources to confront the social, environmental and health violations caused by their employers. The report found that BTC Co. did not educate the Azeri citizens appropriately on the construction plans for the pipeline. Many did not know where and when the construction would start, giving BTC Co. the ability to pursue the pipeline project without much resistance.
Even though estimates show the pipeline will add $230 billion to Azerbaijan economy alone, CPOW, as well as other grassroots organizations and oil workers unions, feel that these benefits do not offset the unavoidable social and environmental costs, especially since these costs will be paid by those living near and working on the pipeline, not by the ones who will receive its profits.
The report was presented in March 2004 at a conference in Baku, where 20 NGOs attended. The World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) refused to attend this presentation. However, many journalists attended the conference, and as a result, the previously pro-BTC media began “to see the real problems,” said Mirvari Gahramanli, chairwoman of CPOW.
Continuing Action and Response
Although it has been functional for a little over a year, the controversy over the BTC pipeline continues. People are still protesting the pipeline and the working conditions in Azerbaijan. Now that the pipeline construction is finished, BP will make a large number of layoffs in the coming years, with around 7,000 people becoming unemployed.
Because of the significant problems with the BTC pipeline specifically and the Azeri oil industry generally, CPOW and the Center for Civil Initiatives continue their work. The Center has met with BP 56 times. Many promises have been made, but there have been no tangible results from these negotiations.
However, citizen action is gaining strength, which is no small feat given the long and brutal history of citizen repression behind the Iron Curtain. CPOW has organized many successful strikes and rallies. In November 2005, oil workers achieved a significant victory as a result of a mass strike at a McDermott oil services construction yard. The strike, the largest since Azerbaijan’s independence and partially organized by CPOW, was peaceful, and workers gained a 20% pay increase, with another 12% increase at the beginning of 2006. (See full article here.)
The very fact that there are studies, strikes and rallies now exposing the egregious behavior of the BTC Co. and BP is a huge step forward. Twenty years ago, this type of citizen-based initiative would have been impossible. While the BTC pipeline continues to operate, there is indeed pressure being applied for greater corporate accountability.
But this pressure needs to continue. The people of the Center for Civil Initiatives and CPOW, as well as all oil laborers fighting for their rights against oil companies in Azerbaijan, are committed to the struggle for appropriate working conditions and a clean and healthy environment.
“The improvements we have seen are just ‘cosmetic’ and not fundamental,” said Mirvari Gahramanli, chairwoman of CPOW. “We will stay resolved and continue our work.”
EXTENDED PHOTO CAPTION:
Women fetch water in the village of Girag Gasaman. There are no roads in Girag Gasaman, which is one kilometer away from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that runs in the fields of the village. The earth gets muddy after rain. One woman said, “The government says, ‘Pay the taxes and you will get the new road.’ But how can we pay taxes if we have no money?” (Photo by: Rena Effendi for EurasiaNet)