Crude Accountability: 20 years of Chevron in Kazakhstan

Since 2003, Crude Accountability has been working for environmental justice in oil and gas impacted communities in Kazakhstan, including at the Karachaganak Oil and Gas Condensate Field, one of the largest petroleum fields in the world. Located five kilometers from the village of Berezovka, Karachaganak is the largest and most deadly source of pollution for this community, where fifty percent of the population is chronically ill.

Crude Accountability has worked with the villagers on a campaign to relocate the village to a safe and environmentally clean location, using legal strategies; conducting environmental monitoring of the air, soil and water; filing complaints with the Office of Compliance, Advisor/Ombudsman at the International Finance Corporation (the private lending arm of the World Bank Group); and pressuring local, regional and national government offices to comply with Kazakhstani law and relocate Berezovka.

Chevron, one of the companies in the Karachaganak Petroleum Operating, B.V. consortium (together with British Gas, ENI/Agip and Lukoil), has been actively working in Kazakhstan since the early 1990s, including at the Tengiz Field, which is also located in western Kazakhstan. Tengiz is also a polluting field, with high levels of sulfur, and Chevron has been cited at both locations for repeated violations of Kazakhstan’s environmental standards.

Crude Accountability works in partnership with local organizations, journalists and other activists in Kazakhstan to hold Chevron and other western oil and gas companies accountable for their corporate behavior, including violations of national law; failure to uphold the highest environmental and social standards; and failure to disclose relevant information to affected communities.

Crude Accountability is also a member of the True Cost of Chevron Network, an international network of environmental, human rights and environmental justice organizations working to hold Chevron accountable around the world for its human rights and environmental violations. The Network organizes each year to provide alternative information to Chevron’s annual report and to speak to shareholders at the company’s Annual General Meeting about Chevron’s negative impact on communities all over the world. For more information about the True Cost of Chevron Network, check out our website.

For more information about Crude Accountability’s environmental justice campaign in Kazakhstan, please visit our website.

You can watch our film on 20 years of Chevron in Kazakhstan in English or Russian: