CRUDE ACCOUNTABILITY LETTER TO MR. RASHAD KALDANY
Mr. Rashad-Rudolf Kaldany
Director
Oil, Gas, Mining and Chemicals Department
International Finance Corporation
World Bank Group
2121 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20433
February 27, 2006
Dear Mr. Kaldany:
Thank you for your January 20, 2006 response to our letter of December 9, 2005 to World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz concerning the harmful impacts to communities from the IFC-backed Karachaganak Petroleum Operating (KPO) consortium. We appreciate the response from the World Bank Group and from the IFC regarding the current critical situation in Berezovka, Kazakhstan. We would like to provide some additional feedback and questions:
In your letter you stated:
KPO commissioned an independent air quality study by a scientific organisation with extensive international experience (the non-profit Batelle Memorial Institute), as a complement to its own monitoring program. The results of the Batelle study, which was performed in accordance with the highest internationally accepted scientific standards (for both data collection and analysis), have recently become available.
Crude Accountability and the Berezovka Initiative Group kindly request that copies of this study be sent to our organizations and to the village residents of Berezovka as soon as possible. We also request that the study be made available in English and Russian.
Your letter stated:
KPO is now in the process of preparing and providing translations of the Batelle study to all the villages neighboring the field.
However, Ms. Svetlana Anosova, Head of the Berezovka Initiative Group, has not yet seen the study. Could you inform us of when the translation will be completed and provided to all the villages?
You also state:
KPO has now offered to collaborate with local communities and other stakeholders on the joint design and implementation of an ongoing additional program of scientifically sound ambient air quality monitoring, whose accuracy, reliability and independence can be accepted by all parties. As part of this stakeholder partnership initiative, KPO has specifically stated its interest in an active contribution from members of civil society, including the Initiative Group of the residents of Berezovka and Crude Accountability.
We are pleased to learn of KPO’s interest in engaging in such a joint effort to monitor the emissions of the field; in response to the CAO report on Karachaganak, Crude Accountability suggested a similar effort in April 2005. However, we have not yet received any communication from KPO regarding this joint stakeholder activity, nor have we received any response to the proposal for collaboration that we sent to KPO last year. We would be interested in receiving in written form, directly from KPO, their suggestions for joint environmental monitoring. While we agree wholeheartedly with your suggestion that “both the Initiative Group and Crude Accountability… respond to KPO’s offer of partnership…”, we have yet to receive an offer of partnership to which we can respond.
Regarding the water quality data for the water supply system for Berezovka, we have attached the analysis conducted by an independent laboratory in Orenburg, Russia in December 2004. We urge you to examine this issue more fully now that you are able to review the data to which we referred in our previous letter.
Health and environmental problems continue to cause great concern in the village of Berezovka. We are pleased that the CAO has sent a representative to Berezovka to interview residents and members of the Initiative Group, and hope that you will continue to focus your attention on this community, which has suffered greatly as a result of environmental contamination from Karachaganak.
We look forward to working with KPO and the IFC on a joint environmental monitoring program, which is designed and commissioned independently by the stakeholders at Karachaganak, including the Berezovka Initiative Group, Crude Accountability and other civil society organizations.
Sincerely,
Kate Watters
Executive Director
CC:
World Bank Group President Paul Wolfowitz
A.A. Belonog, Minister of Health, Republic of Kazakhstan
R.S. Akhmetov, Deputy to the Senate of the Parliament, Republic of Kazakhstan
A. Samakova, Minster for Environmental Protection, Republic of Kazakhstan
R.Kh. Suerbaev, Oblast Ecology, Western Kazakhstan Oblast
Head of Oblast Department of Health, Western Kazakhstan Oblast
E.K. Imashev, Akim, Burlinsky Raion
Mr. R. Uteshev, Deputy Akim, Burlinsky Raion
V.I. Chigvintsev, Deputy of Burlinsky Raion
R.K. Narmukhamedov, Akim, Berezovka Okrug
P. Campelli, General Director, KPO. B.V.
Kate Kopishke, Specialist Ombudsman, CAO, IFC
Meg Taylor, CAO, IFC
Bureau for Human Rights, Uralsk