Chevron extends a green hand to local communities

She said the company had faced opposition at first from communities that thought Western firms would take advantage of local people and the campaign was pure propaganda.

"It's taken time to convince people we intend to do good things for their communities," she said.

The company now selects projects from applications from villagers on condition that they are not politically related and will benefit the public.

Normally each project takes three years until the community can take it over.

Last week the company took journalists to Songkhla to show them its reforestation programme, which has planted 2,500 mangroves and released 500,000 baby shrimp.

Duchada said this had been proposed by villagers in Singha Nakon district who had been trying unsuccessfully since 2001 to band together to undo damage from shrimp-farming.

The company took 30 community leaders to see a successful rehabilitation programme in Krabi province and also brought in experts to teach them how to proceed.

The project aims to boost the population of fish, shellfish and crustaceans native to the habitat.

Village leader Boo-asan Laetee said the villagers had wanted to revive the mangroves around Songkhla lake for a long time but the government had turned them down.

"I'm glad the company has stepped in to help us," he said.

Chevron merged with Unocal last August and now has 36,000 square kilometres of natural-gas concessions in the Gulf of Thailand.

Natural-gas production in Thailand meets one-third of local consumption

Based on production in June this year, Chevron has a daily production capacity of 1,514 million cubic feet of raw natural gas, 46,252 barrels of liquefied natural gas and 101,529 barrels of crude oil and invested Bt382.34 billion in Thailand from 1962 to last year.

It paid royalties of Bt113 billion in the Kingdom from 1981 to last year.

Watcharapong Thongrung

The Nation