Oil companies keep up Myanmar ties

But of course. Why let a few deaths get in the way of profit?!! "Business as usual"

Even as Myanmar's junta intensifies its crackdown on pro-democracy protests, oil companies are jostling for access to the country's largely untapped natural gas and oil fields that activists say are funding a repressive regime.

China -- Myanmar's staunchest diplomatic protector and largest trading partner -- is particularly keen on investing in the country because of its strategic location for pipelines to feed the Chinese economy's growing thirst for oil and gas.

Companies from South Korea, Thailand and elsewhere also are looking to exploit the energy resources of the desperately poor Southeast Asian country.

France's Total SA and Malaysia's Petroliam Nasional Bhd., or Petronas, pump gas from fields off Myanmar's coast through a pipeline to Thailand, which takes 90 percent of Myanmar's gas output, according to Thailand's PTT Exploration & Production PLC.

Thailand's PTTEP, a partner in Total's Yadana and Petronas' Yetagun gas projects, said in a statement that production of natural gas is at the normal rate, and should not be affected by the unrest. "It is business as usual," said Sidhichai Jayamt, the company's manager for external relations. "When we have a contract with the government, it doesn't really matter who the government is."

"They are funding the dictatorship," said Marco Simons, U.S. legal director at EarthRights International, an environmental and human rights group with offices in Thailand and Washington. "The oil and gas companies have been one of the major industries keeping the regime in power."

From CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/09/28/myanmar.oil.ap/index.html