Laos to Start Building Mekong Dam This Year, Testing Neighbors

Sep 8, 2011
By Nicholas Heath and Daniel Ten Kate
Bloomberg

Laos plans to start construction this year on the $3.8 billion Thai-financed Xayaburi hydropower plant on the Mekong River after changing the design to placate neighboring countries opposed to the project.

Laos completed a review of the dam initiated in April to ease concerns that it would harm rice production and fish catches downstream, said Viraphonh Viravong, director-general of the ministry of energy and mines’ Department of Electricity. Vietnam earlier recommended a 10-year delay for all hydropower projects on the river, which also runs through Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia from its source in China’s Tibetan plateau.

“We want to explain, and make the other countries comfortable,” Viraphonh said in an interview in Hanoi yesterday. “If they are still very negative about it, of course we will spend some more time on it.”

Cambodian prime minister to visit Laos to discuss Mekong

Thu, 27 Mar 2008
DPA

Phnom Penh - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is to pay a one-day visit to neighbouring Laos to meet with regional officials on issues affecting the Mekong River, the Foreign Ministry said in a press release received Thursday. Plans by Laos to dam the river to produce electricity have alarmed Cambodian officials and environmental groups alike, who worry that the dams would hurt rich downstream fisheries on which Cambodia and other nations depend.

Hun Sen is scheduled to visit Laos Friday and would be accompanied by Foreign Minister Hor Namhong and Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh, the press release said.

Just like Hun Sen in Cambodia, Laos' PM Bouphavanh has no plan to introduce democracy

Laos targets hydropower, not democracy

By Daryl Loo and Geert De Clercq

SINGAPORE, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Landlocked Laos is shaping itself into a battery for its power-hungry neighbours, by damming up its rivers to tap hydropower, but the communist state has no plans to introduce democracy, its prime minister told Reuters.

With an average monthly income of less than $2 a day and 80 percent of its 6.5 million population surviving on subsistence farming, Laos is one of the world's poorest countries.

"Compared to the U.S., which is in the 21st century, Laos is still in the 16th or 17th century," Lao Prime Minister Bouasone Bouphavanh said in an interview ahead of the ASEAN Summit.

But the communist-led country, which dropped central planning for market reforms in 1986, is developing fast and saw its economy grow 8 percent in the fiscal year to September 2007.

"We are confident we can achieve another 8 percent growth for fiscal year 2007/2008, and we believe we can achieve higher growth beyond that," Bouphavanh, 53, said through a translator.

Bouphavanh -- who became PM in 2006 -- expects that foreign direct investment (FDI) this year will more than double to $500 million, from $200 million in the last fiscal year, with funds mainly coming from neighbouring China, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Much of Laos' FDI will go into turning the country into what it calls "a battery for the region", through a series of dams that will generate power for sale to its neighbours.

Major investors in Laos' hydropower and infrastructure industries include China's Sinohydro Corp and Datang International Power, Thailand's Banpu and Italian-Thai Development, and Vietnam's Song Da Group and Petrovietnam.

Companies from Western countries investing in Laos include Australia's Oxiana, French electricity group EDF, and London-listed Salamander Energy.

Laos currently has the capacity to produce 600 megawatts of hydropower, of which 200 megawatt are exported.

But Bouphavanh said the country has the potential to produce up to 28,000 megawatt of hydropower from the Mekong River and the 16 Mekong tributaries within Laos borders.

It has already commited to supply 7,000 megawatts to Thailand, 5,000 megawatts to Vietnam, and 1,500 megawatts to Cambodia by 2015, he added.

Laos' dams have come under tough criticism from environmental groups, who slam the projects for harming biodiversity and displacing the many ethnic communities that live in the area.

The Soviet-educated Bouphavanh -- a career cadre who took part in Laos' 1975 communist revolution -- refused to be drawn on a date for when Laos could become a democracy.

"I don't think it will be the right path for Laos to have a multi-party system," said Bouphavanh.

The ruling Lao People's Revolutionary Party is the country's only legal political group in the country.

"During the eighth party congress in 2006, we re-affirmed our ultimate goal to lead the nation towards socialism," he said.

On Tuesday, Bouphavanh and other leaders of the Association of South East Asian Nations will sign a charter that spells out ASEAN's desire to strengthen democracy and protect human rights. (Editing by David Fox)

Cambodia raps Laos over Mekong dams [-Can Cambodia really bypass VN to order Laos to stop building dams on the Mekong?]

Siem Reap, Cambodia (dpa) - After facing the wrath of environmental groups earlier this week, the Mekong River Commission (MRC) member countries engaged in their own battles Thursday during a meeting of the four-member body with donors and observers.

Although the meetings were closed to media, Cambodian delegates made their frustration with what they called neighbouring Laos' lack of transparency clear outside as tensions over six proposed hydro- electric dams in a number of countries on the lower Mekong mounted.

Scientists said in May they feared Laos' proposed dams in particular could destroy fish migration and spawning, decimating the catch people in MRC member countries Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam rely on and causing irreversible environmental damage.

"We sent an official letter to Laos months ago to voice our concern and ask for an explanation, but so far we have received no answer," vice chairman of the Cambodian National Mekong Committee, Sin Niny, told Deutche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Cambodian MRC representative Lim Kean Hor said the MRC was a complicated organization which relied on cooperation from members and donors - which include energy-hungry China - to reach consensus. However, that cooperation may be fraying in some areas, he added.

"At the moment this is just an initiative by Laos. When they begin to build them we will stop them," he said, saying the MRC needed independent expert studies of environmental impact assessments.

The six dams across the Lower Mekong River are currently in the planning stages, more than a decade after they were dismissed as too costly and environmentally damaging, non-government organizations said in a press conference in Bangkok earlier this week.

At least one is believed to be the project of a powerful Lao politician's son, raising questions about whether the environment is taking a backseat to money, one environmentalist said on condition of anonymity, adding now was the time for the MRC to stand up.

"Since early 2006, Thai, Malaysian and Chinese companies have been granted permission to conduct feasibility studies for six large hydropower dams on the lower Mekong mainstream," they said in a press statement.

China delegate Biao Ling Sheng, however, urged a balance of development and conservation Thursday as that country announced continued strong funding for the MRC. "We need sustainable conservational development," he said.

In the end, however, the onus remained on the MRC to prove its role as a strong, independent forum for member countries and other interested parties to raise concerns which was transparent and had teeth, World Conservation Union representative Kate Lazarus said.

"The role of local communities should be given a higher priority by the MRC. There is some important information which is not being made public by the MRC," the Laos-based representative said.