Government justification demanded on gas pipeline

Opponents of the Thai-Burmese gas pipeline project will be satisfied if the government publicises the pros and cons of the project, Prime Minister's Office Minister Supatra Masdit said yesterday.

Conservationists recognise that the government has the power to make a final decision on the future of the project, but they only want the government to justify the decision after it is made, she said.

The government will set up a committee to listen to the Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT), the project's owner, and to conservation groups which demand the 260km pipeline be rerouted to spare the forests in Kanchanaburi province.

The panel, to be chaired by former premier Anand Panyarachun, will take about ten days to gather information from both sides and will then forward the pros and cons of the project to the government for a final decision, she said.

Hearings are expected to begin today and to be concluded by Feb 20.

But opponents insist that the protesters will remain at their camp at Huay Khayeng forest until the committee reaches its conclusion.

They have set up camp there for the past several weeks to block the pipeline laying through the fertile forest.

While the committee is conducting the hearing, they will study the wildlife situation in the forest, including a herd of some 40 wild elephants, to try to come up with measures to protect them.

They said in a statement issued yesterday that the process which brought about the project and gave rise to the current conflict was a total failure which has denied the public any say in decision making on major development projects.

Premier Chuan Leekpai said on Monday that the protest against the gas pipe project emerged too late because the contract had been signed and the government could not scrap it.

PTT sealed the pipeline contract - to feed natural gas from Burma's gas fields in the Andaman Sea to a plant in Ratchaburi - four years ago.

Burma has completed its pipeline section to the border and the PTT is bound to finish its own system by July 1 or face a daily fine of more than 40 million baht.

Meanwhile, a popular monk has condemned pipeline opponents as unpatriotic and troublemakers.

Phra Dharma Khosacharn, popularly known as Luang Pho Panya Nantha Bhikhu, used harsh words in scolding the opponents during a sermon to pipeline supporters in Kanchaburi.

He said the small group of opponents had damaged national development and caused hardship to the people, who want cheap energy.

"I want to ask them if they don't have anything better to do and who pays them to do what they are doing," he said.