BANGKOK: The concern by green groups followed a path-breaking journey by two ships up the Mekong River underscoring Beijing’s determination to find cheaper, alternative routes of transporting oil to China. On Dec 29, the two vessels arrived at a port in China’s south-west province of Yunnan carrying a total of 300 tons of refined oil shipped from a port in Thailand’s northern province of Chiang Rai, reports Xinhua, China’s state news agency.

This journey along the Mekong marked “the trial launch of China’s oil shipping programme with its South-East Asian partners,” it added. “Experts say the waterway will serve as an alternative to the Strait of Malacca as a route for oil shipping and help to ensure oil supply to Yunnan and South-West China at large.”

Environmentalists who raised the alarm when plans for this oil route were first revealed in 2004 have been incensed further as it became known in mid-2006 that China had secured an increase in the quota of oil it hopes to move up the Mekong River in the future. The initial agreement permitted a monthly shipping quota of 1,200 tons of refined oil. It was signed in March last year by four countries -- Burma, Laos, Thailand and China.

Yet, by the time the two ships began their landmark journey, Beijing had set its sights on transporting close to “70,000 tons of refined oil each year from Thailand alone via the Mekong River,” Qiao Xinmin, China’s chief of provincial maritime affairs bureau, told Xinhua.

“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.”

The same was true when Beijing won over the countries south of Yunnan to deepen the Mekong River by blasting the rapids to enable large ships to travel, she added in an interview. “China led this effort and was the first to give the money for it, because it was going to be the main beneficiary.”

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.

“The people were completely kept out from this plan, particularly their fear about an oil spill,” she explained in an interview. “A spill will destroy the river’s eco-system.”

The 4,880 km-long Mekong River begins its journey in the Tibetan plateau, travelling through Yunnan, flows along the borders of Burma, Thailand and Laos before it snakes through Cambodia and Vietnam, where it flows out into the South China Sea. An estimated 60 million people who live along the Mekong’s banks from Burma southwards depend on it for food, water and transport.

Communities living along the river’s lower basin depend on it significantly for its ample fish supply, states the Mekong River Commission, an inter-governmental body comprising of the lower basin countries of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. The annual fisheries in the lower Mekong accounts for nearly two per cent of “the total world catch and 20 per cent of all fish caught from inland waters of the world,” adds the commission, based in the Laotian capital of Vientiane.

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 per cent 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.

“This pipeline will cut through the centre of Burma. There will be a lot of forced relocation and forced labour, because the route goes through heavily populated areas,” says Wong Aung, spokesman for the Shwe Gas Movement, a group fighting for the rights of the Arakan community in Burma, the region where Sittwe is located. “Many trees will have to be cut in the forests that cover the Arakan Yoma range.”

One of the proposed plans for the pipeline begins at the port in the Bay of Bengal, then heads east through the Arakan State to the Arakan Yoma mountain range -- which rises to 5,000 feet above sea level at its highest. From there, it is due to head through three large regions in Burma -- Magway Division, Mandalay Division and the

Shan State -- before entering Yunnan. —Dawn/The IPS News Service