Villagers of Pak Bang village in Satun expressed concern over their homes and livelihoods in the face of a huge government fuel depot project that will require 5,000 rai (2,000 acres) of land in their area.  No one has told them anything or given them any information, they complained.

The fuel depot is one component of the government’s Landbridge scheme which was conceived in 2005 to create a logistical shortcut from Satun on the Andaman coast to Songkhla on the Gulf of Thailand.  The scheme is meant to reduce the costs of shipping goods to and from the Middle East and Europe, and to compete with the conventional route through the Straits of Malacca and Singapore.

The scheme includes a deep sea port at Pak Bara, Satun, linked with a second deep sea port at Songkhla, a twin-track railway from Songkhla’s Chana district to Pak Bara, and a highway and oil pipeline from Pak Bang to Songkhla.  All these are making rapid progress. 

Oil pipeline (pink line) from Satun to Songkhla

A 5,000-rai oil storage facility will be built at Pak Bang village in Satun’s La-ngu district, and another, covering 10,000 rai, in Songkhla at the other end of the pipeline.

According to Tayuden Bara, head of Mu 2 of Pak Bang village in Satun, villagers have not been given any information.

3-4 land brokers have come looking for land to buy, he said.

‘I have been to meetings at the district, but I’ve never been told of this fuel depot project.  If they say this project will use 5,000 rai here, I for one will oppose it, because villagers will have no land left.’

There once was a meeting at the Tambon Administrative Organization about the Pak Bara deep sea port, but there was no mention of 5,000 rai for an oil depot, he said.

According to documents from a meeting in Songkhla about the oil pipeline about a year ago, the fuel depot at Pak Bang was discussed, but as yet government agencies have never talked about it to the villagers who would be affected.  As the land of Mu 2 amounts to only a little more than 2,000 rai, land in other Mu will be needed.

In Mu 2, Tayuden vowed he and the villagers would never give in, because they had nowhere else to go.

Tayuden Bara, head of Mu 2 of Pak Bang village in Satun

‘If we have to kill, we have to.  The villagers want development, but they will not give in to coercion.  If it’s state land where nobody lives, it’s OK, because no one will be in trouble.  They won’t let their land and houses be expropriated.  The government is supposed to help the villagers.  It can’t just take away their land,’ the village head said, adding that the area would catch fire like the nearby three Southern border provinces.

Tayuden said that the government’s usual practice had been to relocate affected people inland, while most of the 4-5,000 villagers are fishers, who would find it difficult to change their way of living.

When a state agency wanted a 72-rai plot to build a Boy Scout camp less than a year ago, it got into a serious dispute with the villagers who used the land to sun-dry anchovies.  He had to talk his villagers into sharing half the land with the camp, Tayuden said.

No villagers were invited to any meetings held in Songkhla.  Tayuden was puzzled when he read in a document that representatives of the villagers had given consent for the project. 

‘I want to know who the two representatives are [as claimed in the document].’

In the area, there are two mosques, two Muslim cemeteries and one Buddhist, and two schools, which the village head feared would be destroyed by the project.