A small but determined group of cyclists (including a very noisy sound system) visited several companies complicit in the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline on Friday 10th October 2003. Outnumbered by police on bikes, motorbikes and lurking in 3 vans, the Mass made its way from the South Bank through rush-hour traffic to the offices of Bechtel just off Fleet Street (providing support to the construction work, as well as feasting on Iraqi 'reconstruction'), AMEC (leading the construction, also off Fleet Street), ABN AMRO & the European Bank for Rapacious Destruction (EBRD, Bishopsgate), BP & Mizuho (both Finsbury Circus.) Each location received plenty of boos, whistles and rants on the sound system's microphone.

The rain held off, bemused passers-by seemed mostly onside when handed an explanatory leaflet, there were no arrests and all in all it was a fun, educational, road reclaiming couple of hours that marked out a dark web of pollution, exploitation, corruption and injustice. It was a good way to herald the No New Oil gathering of the following day, where over 200 people crammed into LSE to hear about the potential for a new and radical coalition saying no to Big Oil. Now if only all of those 200+ could have made it the night before, then we'd really be on to something

Text of the leaflet handed out along the way:

Welcome to the Climate Trashers' Critical Mass, a fossil fuel-free celebration of unmotorised transport, paying particular attention to companies and institutions profiting from BP's Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, a social and ecological disaster waiting to happen.

If this pipeline is built, it will pump 1 million barrels of oil per day for 40 years - that's a hell of a lot of climate-changing CO2 when it comes to be burnt in our cars and power stations. But US & UK governments care more about world domination via control of oil supplies than about the rights of people standing in their way, as we have seen most recently in Iraq.

The European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) and International Finance Corporation (IFC) have been carrying out 'public' 'consultation' over the summer as to whether they should lend other people's money to BP to build the pipeline, which would run from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia. Since this consultation comes to an end on October 14th and 9th respectively, London Rising Tide thought it would make visits to these and several other locations to remind them about the extent and passion of the opposition to the pipeline, (not to mention the oil industry and the vicious economic system it helps to prop up.)

Among the dodgy addresses we'll be visiting are:
Public banks etc.: IFC, EBRD, Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD)
Oil companies: BP, Statoil, Total
Private banks: ABN Amro, Citigroup, SocGen, Mizuho, Lazards
Construction companies: AMEC, Bechtel

You can find more information at www.risingtide.org.uk and www.baku.org.uk
As well as taking more direct forms of action, it might be worth making your feelings known to one or all of these people/places:  caspianoilandgasprojects@ebrd.com,  bortzk@ebrd.com,  harrisob@ebrd.com,
 btc@mediate.org,  dunnk@ebrd.com,  KerbyJ@ebrd.com,  RKaldany@ifc.org,
 Duncan.Lawson@dti.gsi.gov.uk,  dallwood@ecgd.gov.uk,  vbrown@ecgd.gov.uk,
 rgotts@ecgd.gov.uk...and even your MP, if you can bear to speak to him/her.

The greater the pressure there is on both the EBRD & IFC in this final period, as well as on government departments like DFiD and ECGD, the greater the chance of a refusal to commit public funds or deferral of that decision. Either of those two outcomes would allow us more time to prise the project apart using direct action, legal challenges and lobbying.