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June 7th 2004

Pipeline Campaigners Quiz BP on Security Fears

Campaigners working on BP's Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline today submitted a formal request for personal information held on them by the company, under the terms of the 1998 Data Protection Act.

The move comes after the unprecedented and arguably illegal exclusion of campaigners holding shares from BP's recent AGM. The systematic exclusion only of people who have been critical of the immensely controversial Baku-Ceyhan project suggests that BP has compiled significant data on named individuals, which they are legally obliged to provide on request.

Section 7 of the Data Protection Act entitles individuals to request all personal data held on them by a named corporation, including emails, word
processed files, database entries, digital images and video footage. It also obliges the company involved to disclose the sources of that information.

"It seems clear that if BP excluded specific shareholders, the security guards must have been working to a list. This almost certainly means that
they hold files on key activists," said Nicholas Hildyard of the Cornerhouse, one of the groups which has most closely analysed the BTC project. "By law, they now have forty days to provide us with any files they hold, and we look forward to seeing what they have."

The Baku-Ceyhan project, which is primarily funded with public money, has been dogged in recent months by allegations of corruption, violations of the human rights along its route and potentially catastrophic design failures.

"BP is under ever greater pressure as its mistakes and failures in the BTC project come more and more to light," said Hannah Griffiths of Friends of the Earth. "It is crucial that any information held on those who have pointed out those mistakes is accurate, and that is why we have made this application."

Lorne Stockman, of PLATFORM, was one of the campaigners excluded from the AGM, despite being a shareholder. He commented, "At its AGM, BP excluded shareholders who were going to ask the Board difficult questions - flying in the face of British company law. If BP is using files on individuals to decide to exclude people, then it must come clean about what is in those files".

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