Thailand to lobby for pipeline route

Thailand to lobby for pipeline route

BANGKOK (AFP): A senior Thai official, citing the safety of Thai oil workers, will lobby his government to reroute an international natural gas pipeline away from Myanmar's southern rebel territory following a recent attack, a local daily reported yesterday.

Korn Dabaransi, a minister at the Prime Minister's Office, said that Karen and Mon guerrillas in Myanmar posed a threat to Thai oil workers who are to construct part of the 400-kilometer pipeline at the Thai border province of Kanchanburi, the Sunday Nation said.

Karen rebels ambushed a group of technicians on March 8 along the first stages of the pipeline, which is to stretch from the Andaman Sea, across the southern Myanmarese panhandle and to an electricity plant in Thailand.

Five people were killed in the raid and eleven wounded, a statement from Total, a French state-owned oil company said recently in Paris.