China oil refinery threatens Costa Rica environment: groups
June 17, 2007 Filed Under: Oil and Gas 
An oil refinery would jeopardize Costa Rica’s environment as planned by a Chinese company known as a polluter, environmental groups said Saturday.
Oilwatch Mesoamerica and other groups warned that recent agreements between China and Costa Rica included a refinery built by China Petroleum Corporation.
“We are studying the history of this company, which has little concern for the environment or human rights, two of President Oscar Arias’s causes elsewhere in the world,” Oilwatch Mesoamerica director Alicia Casas told AFP.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Arias broke with Taiwan and normalized relations with China on June 1 and followed up with a set of cooperation agreements.
Oilwatch Mesoamerica joined with the Federation for the Conservation of the Environment to denounce a large number of accidents they said killed hundreds of people and caused a lot of pollution “through negligence” of the China Petroleum Corporation in the Chinese cities of Cangzhou, Chongqing and Kaixian.
“We were surprised that one of the Beijing envoy’s first announcements was construction of a mega-refinery, at a cost of billions of dollars,” Casas said.
She said Arias “has an obsession” with bringing this oil company to Costa Rica.
Information from: AFP via news.yahoo.com
