Singapore-based petroleum company Interra Resources is being accused by an activist group in Myanmar of complicity in alleged war crimes committed by Myanmar’s military government.
The group Justice for Myanmar said Interra Resources’ majority stake in energy company Goldpetrol makes it complicit in war crimes because Goldpetrol produces and sells millions of barrels of oil that benefits the country’s military government.
In a report released Wednesday, Justice for Myanmar said Interra holds 60% of the Goldpetrol Joint Operating Company. The report describes the venture as one of the few remaining companies in Myanmar still extracting oil from the country’s onshore fields since the military overthrew a democratically elected government in February 2021, setting off a civil war that has killed thousands of civilians and displaced over 3 million people.
"Interra Resources must take action now so that it is consistent with its international human rights responsibilities. This necessarily involves stopping the supply of crude oil to the junta. It needs to decide the most responsible way to do this, and it may involve suspending operations or divestment,” Yadanar Maung, a Justice for Myanmar spokesperson, told VOA ahead of the report’s release.
Interra did not reply to VOA’s requests for comment.
Justice for Myanmar said Interra’s annual reports and leaked financial statements from Goldpetrol reveal that all of Goldpetrol’s oil production goes to the state-owned Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) — more than 2.3 million barrels from 2021 to 2023, the last full year of available data.
Those sales, the group said, have been earning Interra record profits. It said the firm reported $24.5 million and $19.1 million in crude oil sales to MOGE in 2022 and 2023, respectively, far more than in any of the previous five years. The average annual profits for the previous five years is $12.9 million.
Citing in its report anonymous sources with knowledge of Goldpetrol’s operations and the country’s oil supply chains, Justice for Myanmar said the crude Goldpetrol is pumping out of its two fields heads to the Mann refinery in the country’s Magwe region, which supplies the area’s military bases with jet fuel and other refined oil products.
The refinery sits in the heart of Myanmar’s military weapons-making hub, between an air force base and a gunpowder mill.
Since the coup, the military claims it has been fighting so-called “terrorists” -- armed rebel groups -- with proportionate force to restore peace and order.
But United Nations experts and others have repeatedly accused the junta of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. As the junta continues to lose ground to armed rebel groups across the country, the U.N. said, it is resorting ever more to indiscriminate artillery and airstrikes on civilian areas, destroying scores of churches, schools and clinics and razing whole villages.
Conflict data collected by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a U.K.-based research group, show a gradual drop in armed clashes since late 2023 but a rise in air and drone strikes, including a record 345 in October.
A military airstrike in January on a village under rebel control in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, which borders Magwe, reportedly killed about 40 people, including women and children.
Justice for Myanmar said Interra bears some of the responsibility.
"Interra Resources is complicit in the junta's international crimes through the supply of crude oil. This oil fuels Myanmar military operations that indiscriminately target civilians and amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Yadanar Maung said.
"The domestic production of fuel is particularly important for the junta, given the impact of sanctions against junta banks and its aviation fuel supply chain,” the spokesperson added.
The U.S. and other Western governments have imposed sanctions on a number of Myanmar banks and firms owned by or in business with the country’s miliary since the coup in 2021, including some handling jet fuel sales and supplies.
Besides urging Interra to consider suspending its Myanmar operations or selling off its shares in Goldpetrol, Justice for Myanmar said Singapore’s stock exchange should investigate Interra for any breaches of its rules. Trading in another listed firm was halted in 2021 because of its operations in Myanmar, which the exchange had designated a “sanctioned nation.”
The stock exchange did not reply to VOA’s requests for comment.
Justice for Myanmar said Interra told the activist group ahead of the report’s launch that Goldpetrol’s contract with MOGE requires it to sell all its crude oil to the government, and that the joint venture has continued supplying MOGE after the coup to fulfill its “contractual obligations.”
The group said Interra declined to comment on how that oil was being used.
Amnesty International, which has also investigated Myanmar’s jet fuel supply chains, said the military’s airstrikes continue to devastate civilian areas, driving even schools to build bomb shelters.
“Airstrikes are only becoming more frequent, and aviation fuel remains a key asset for the Myanmar military, which is why we continue to call for states and companies to suspend shipments,” Amnesty International’s Myanmar researcher Joe Freeman told VOA.
The group said public pressure has convinced some of the foreign firms along Myanmar’s jet fuel supply chain to pull out but said their exit does not always solve the problem.
“After that departure, either local companies with even closer ties to the Myanmar military entered the scene or regional companies with limited international operations —and for the most part, immune to sanctions — came in to fill the void. We have seen this happen in a number of business sectors in Myanmar,” Freeman said.
Goldpetrol’s other shareholder that owns the remaining 40% stake in the company is North Petroleum International, a subsidiary of the China North Industries Group Corporation, a Chinese state-owned weapons conglomerate doing business worldwide as NORINCO.
China has been the Myanmar military’s main weapons supplier since the coup, along with Russia. It also has billions of dollars invested in Myanmar’s energy sector, including parallel oil and gas pipelines that stretch across the country from the Bay of Bengal to China’s Yunnan province.
China North Industries Group did not reply to VOA’s request for comment.
