Following the coup of February 1, 2021 in Myanmar, TotalEnergies has on several occasions firmly condemned the abuses and human rights violations taking place there.
Since then, our decisions have been guided by clear principles: to halt all our ongoing projects, but to continue to produce gas from the Yadana field, which is essential for supplying electricity to the Burmese and Thai population; to protect our employees from the risk of criminal prosecution or forced labour; to limit the financial flows to the national oil company MOGE. And since we could not avoid paying the taxes that we owed, I announced that TotalEnergies would donate a sum equal to the taxes that the Company had to pay to the Myanmar state to human rights organizations in Myanmar which we have done.
Despite the action taken, we see that TotalEnergies has not been able to meet the expectations of many of the stakeholders we are in contact with. Several shareholders and civil society organizations, both international and Burmese, are asking us to end the flow of revenues to the Burmese state through the state-owned company MOGE. We have been widely criticized, even though it was materially and legally impossible for us to stop these payments, since most of the payments for gas sales are made directly by the Thai company PTT that purchases the exported gas.