I want to respond to your December 1994 cover story in which you categorize Unocal Corporation as one of the "worst corporations" of the year.
Unocal takes very seriously our obligation to conduct all operations in an ethical and responsible manner - wherever we operate. We strenuously object to the irresponsible, narrow reporting behind this story and think it is important to set the record straight.
We also have a policy of openly communicating with news media. Mr. Mokhiber has indicated to us that he attempted to contact Unocal for comment prior to publication. While that point is now moot, we've been unable to verify receipt of an inquiry from Multinational Monitor. Nevertheless, I can assure you that, as a matter of policy, we would have discussed these issues with any reporter in a timely and honest manner.
Specifically, I'd like to address the article's numerous errors and false allegations about our activities in Myanmar Burma), Canada and California.
Myanmar
Allegation: Unocal plans to route the pipeline through "some of Burma's most pristine tropical forests."
Fact: Wrong. Eighty-five percent of the pipeline will be offshore. The remaining 40-mile onshore portion of the pipeline located in Myanmar will cross mostly scrub vegetation and farm land. To keep our impact to a minimum, Unocal has retained some of the world's leading rain forest experts to help us select the most environmentally responsible pipeline route through a 15-mile section of rain forest. These experts have already determined that this particular section in not "pristine." It had been lightly to heavily impacted by prior logging and hunting by the local inhabitants.
Allegation: There are reports of human rights abuses linked to our proposed pipeline.
Fact: Unocal would never tolerate human rights abuses in connection with any of our projects. We will not operate in any country where we cannot operate ethically and responsibly. Actually, construction of the Myanmar pipeline hasn't even begun. But because we are concerned about these allegations, we are monitoring human rights issues very closely, both on our own and through discussions with international organizations including Amnesty International. Last year we conducted two fact-finding missions to Myanmar and found absolutely no evidence of human rights violations in connection with our project.
In the past few months, President Clinton has made several major foreign policy speeches recognizing the links between trade and fostering human rights and open societies. Today, the President, and others, acknowledge the strategic role of American business in helping bring about progressive change in developing nations. Based on Unocal's 30 years of experience throughout the Southeast Asia region, we concur.
Foreign investment can be an impetus for positive change in developing nations. We've seen our presence improve the quality of life for thousands of local families and their communities in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines . Based on a 1990 exploration project in Myanmar, we anticipate that this project similarly will bring substantial benefit to the people of Myanmar. This includes well-paying jobs, improved access to high-quality health care and job skills training.
Allegation: Unocal is planning to build a pipeline in conjunction with Texaco.
Fact: Wrong. Our partners are Total, S.A., the French oil company, which serves as the pipeline operator, and the Petroleum Authority of Thailand Exploration & Production Plc.
Canada
With regard to our Canadian operations and the Lubicon Indian tribe, let me state that the issue is far more complicated than the simplistic analysis the article provided. Here are the facts:
Unocal has had an oil production facility in northern Alberta since 1983. This is an extremely remote, isolated area approximately 250 miles north of Edmonton. There is a small Lubicon settlement about 11 miles from our plant. In February 1994, Unocal received approval from the Alberta Energy Resources Board (ERCB) to build and operate a small sour gas processing plant immediately next to our existing oil handling facility.
As required by the ERCB, we first discussed the proposed expansion with the Lubicons. Unocal representatives met with Lubicon leaders in August and November 1993. Unocal received letters (dated December 9, 1993 and January 19, 1994) signed by Lubicon Chief Bernard Ominayk which state the Lubicons will not oppose the proposed plant expansion and the new flowlines.
This summer, while the plant was under construction, Unocal was surprised to discover that the Lubicons had contacted the ERCB directly to suddenly protest the plant expansion. As a result, the ERCB decided to re-examine the issuance of permits for the new plant. An exhaustive public hearing took place for 11 days in November and December 1994, during which Unocal, the Lubicons and others testified at length.
Unocal made it very clear at the hearings that we would not have constructed the plant had we not believed we had the prior approval of the Lubicons. It was also made very clear at the hearings that the Lubicons' real concern is their aboriginal land rights claim with the federal and provincial governments of Canada. Dating back to the 1930s, the Lubicons and the two governments have been struggling to resolve this complex dispute - an issue that has nothing to do with Unocal.
Allegation: The new sour gas facility will "emit hazardous pollutants into the air."
Fact: On the contrary, with electrification the new plant will eliminate existing emissions of nitrous oxides (now 1.3 tons/day) and carbon monoxide (now 0.1 tons/day). Sulfur emissions should be no more than 0.3 tons/day. Expected concentration of hydrogen sulfide gas entering the plant is only about 150 ppm (0.015 percent), as opposed to what might be thought of as a typical sour gas concentration of 25 percent hydrogen sulfide or more in plants that actually manufacture sulfur.
This information was presented at length as the ERCB hearings. It reflects the findings of two independent environmental consulting firms hired prior to construction to assess health and safety implications of the sour gas plant and its emissions. Their conclusion: the plant will have no adverse health or environmental impact on people, wildlife or vegetation in the region. To further ensure that the plant operates as safely and cleanly as possible, Unocal will be monitoring emissions at the plant site and we have offered to do so as well on Lubicon land.
Although the ERCB's final decision is still pending, Unocal stands by its commitment to being a good neighbor to the Lubicons. We have offered to discuss job training, employment opportunities, technical assistance and other ways Unocal might be able to help them continue a more sustainable lifestyle.
California
In accepting full responsibility for the underground diluent leak at our Guadalupe oil field, we've launched a massive beach clean-up and remediation project. To date, we have removed over 6,000 barrels of diluent from the beach site, thereby eliminating a significant threat to the marine environment.
Since September, our beach clean-up effort has been operating 24 hours a day excavating, transporting and cleaning diluent-contaminated sand. This is being done in full cooperation with and under monitoring by 16 county, state and federal agencies, under a joint command with the U.S. Coast Guard, California Department of Fish & Game and Unocal.
Since the clean-up project began, it has been documented extensively by public agencies, independent consultants, local environmental organizations and the media. The County of San Luis Obispo and the California Coastal Commission retained two consulting firms to provide comprehensive daily monitoring of the clean-up effort. To address concerns of local environmental organizations, Unocal provided hazardous waste operations training for local environmentalists, who also have full access to the site.
We've also held four public meetings to inform the community about our efforts and respond to any concerns regarding our clean-up program. We maintain a toll-free bilingual information hotline and issue public updates to local media and government agencies. In addition, we continue to underwrite water safety monitoring efforts to ensure that the local water supply has not been affected.
We recognize that we made some serious mistakes at Guadalupe. Unocal's president, John Imle, personally has apologized to the local community. We've pledged to continue working with regulatory and government agencies to deal with the contamination in the most appropriate and effective manner.
While our extensive clean-up efforts do not erase the fact that there was a large leakage at Guadalupe, they do demonstrate our sincere intentions to correct it and to prevent future occurrences.
We anticipate a February completion date for the beach clean-up effort. We'll begin cleaning up the inland portions of the contamination once an Environmental Impact Report is prepared.
Multinational Monitor committed a serious disservice by distorting Unocal's policies and activities. The public interest is best served by an honest examination of the facts. We are always ready to engage in that process.
Roger C. Beach,
Unocal Chief Executive Officer
Los Angeles, California
Russell Mokhiber Responds
Mr. Beach says that "we've been unable to verify receipt of an inquiry from Multinational Monitor."
On December 13, 1994, I called (213) 977-7601 and left a message for Mr. Barry Lane, Unocal Vice President for Public Affairs. Perhaps the person who took the message took down my name, instead of the Monitor's name. Check your messages for "Mokhiber, Russell, Editor, Corporate Crime Reporter."
Sometimes when corporate public relations people see that a reporter is calling about their crimes, they enter a state of deep denial and decide they don't want to call back.
Unocal is a corporate criminal. As we reported, the company was found guilty of environmental crimes. That is something that Mr. Beach does not acknowledge in his letter. Perhaps it was the fact that the Monitor highlighted the crimes of his company that led Mr. Beach to conclude that it was the Monitor that "committed a serious public disservice."
The thing about corporate crime is that it is often crime without shame. The point of the "Ten Worst Corporations" list is to bring a touch of shame back into the crime- prevention equation.
As for the Canada issue, we're trying to get in touch with the Lubicons to update their side of the story. Stay tuned.
Mr. Beach denies our allegation that Unocal plans to route the planned gas pipeline through "some of Burma's most pristine tropical forests."
In fact, Unocal and Total plan to carve a highway 200-feet in width through what Greenpeace International calls "one of the last intact large tropical forest areas in mainland Asia." Rainforest Action Network believes that road building is the single most destructive activity to a rainforest and its inhabitants because road building typically precipitates greater destruction than that wreaked by activities such as logging, mining and resettlement.
Mr. Beach says that Unocal "would never tolerate human rights abuses with any of our projects." Then why are you tolerating them in Burma?
Even the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the collective voice of corporate dictatorship and brutality around the world, for some unexplained reason cannot stomach the thuggery of Burma's State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), as the military dictatorship is known.
The Journal points out that when the Burmese voted in 1990, they rejected the military junta overwhelmingly and gave an 85 percent mandate to the National League for Democracy, the party of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
The generals annulled the results and put Suu Kyi under house arrest.
"Burma is not at war with anybody except its own citizens," the Wall Street Journal exclaimed recently ("Petrodollars for SLORC," February 10, 1995). "Its 300,000- strong military is employed mainly to wage war against ethnic minorities and murder street protesters." An Amnesty International report just out says, "the villagers routinely dragooned as porters for the army are also used as human shields. By such means do Burma's generals maintain their unpopular rule."
As the Journal points out, in 1988, "after shooting some 3,000 pro-democracy demonstrators, Burma's military junta was down to its last $15 million."
"Now a new energy deal announced last week will top off its coffers to the tune of $400 million," the Journal reported.
As R. Strider reported recently ("Blood in the Pipeline," Multinational Monitor, January/February 1995), "in constructing the pipeline, Unocal has allied itself with a brutal and illegitimate government in its decades-long war against three ethnic groups, the Mon, the Karen, and the Tavoyan peoples."
"To put a pipeline through the lands of these peoples - areas never controlled before by the central government - will require Unocal and SLORC to crush these ethnic groups. The repression is being conducted by the Burmese and Thai armies."
Rainforest Action Network pointed out recently that "even while Unocal promises strict human rights standards from its Los Angeles headquarters, SLORC is busy conscripting Mon and Karen villagers into forced labor, specifically in building military facilities and infrastructure."
And SLORC has refused to allow an independent investigation of the human rights situation in the pipeline area.
"SLORC still wants to deal with Burma's ethnic jigsaw, urban dissent and the regime's palpable illegitimacy as military problems - not as evidence that it might be a good idea for the army to seek a political accommodation with the 43 million people who actually make up the country," the Journal proclaimed. "It's clear the only development Burma's generals have in mind is the kind that locks in their own brutal rule."
These are Unocal's partners in commerce.
- Russell Mokhiber