Tengiz oil fine

Oil may be bringing much needed foreign investment into Kazakhstan but it is at high cost to the environment. A court in the capital, Almaty, has just served a $70m fine on Tengizchevroil (TCO), an oil field operator for ecological damage.

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Chevron Texaco owns half of the Tengiz oilfield and ExxonMobil owns a quarter. It is the largest investment in the country and is often used to showcase investment into Kazakhstan. The venture, according to TCO, contributes Ł1bn a year to the Kazakh economy. The area is known to have the second largest oil fields in the world, with the US viewing it as a way to end its reliance on Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) countries.

Tengiz is also the main source of crude for the new Caspian Pipeline Consortium to Russia and is the first private link in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

However, with an abundance of oil comes an abundance of the bi-product, sulphur. It is being stored as a six million tonne mountain next to the Caspian Sea and has caused 3000 people to relocate due to the sulphur dust which is created.

The Kazakh government has said that permission was not granted for the storage. TCO says that the sulphur is safe and has no significant impact on the environment. A spokesperson for ExxonMobil said the company was ‘disappointed’ with the ruling.

Gap cited by unite

A new report by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, known as UNITE has accused US clothes manufacturer the Gap of operating sweatshops in various countries around the world. The report highlights poor health and safety conditions in factories contracted by the multibillion dollar company.

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The company does pay the minimum wage in most of the countries where it hires factories, although the report does allege union busting activities. As in many sweatshop cases, the Gap points to the management of the factories for not maintaining standards. A spokeswoman for the Gap said the factories were not owned by the Gap, but were independently contracted by the company.

UNITE's study cited alleged abuses at Gap factories in Cambodia, Lesotho, Indonesia, Bangladesh, El Salvador and Mexico. Employees from the various countries travelled to the US to protest outside the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.

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