Iran to Build an Oil Pipeline Across the Isthmus of Kra in Malaysia

April 28, Kuala Lumpur (EIRNS) - A 320 km pipeline is to be built across the Ishmus of Kra in northern Malaysia, costing $4.5 billion, substantially funded by the National Iran Oil Company.

The Financial Times reports The New Straits pipeline will be operational in 2010. It will be capable of transporting 800 barrels of oil per day, running from a small island above Penang, across northern Malaysia, along the border with southern Thailand to the east coast of Malaysia near the city of Kota Baru.

With a refinery at both ends for downstream oil products, it will bring welcomed development to two of Malaysia's poorer States. Tankers will unload Iranian oil to a refinery on the island near Penang, pipe it 320 km to the east coast of Malaysia on to waiting tankers.

It will cut 3 days off the journey from the Middle East to China, Japan and South Korea by avoiding the Malacca Straits (50% of the worlds oil passes through this 1000km long narrow and heavily congested seaway) and also avoid Singapore completely.

The British and their off-shore banking assets in Singapore have virulently opposed the building of a canal across the Kra Isthmus in southern Thailand, a project long promoted by Lyndon LaRouche as a crucial "Great Project" for global development. The failure of Thailand to overcome such pressure has resulted in underdevelopment and social chaos in southern Thailand, leading to the bloody insurgency now nearly out of control in the region. The pipeline in Malaysia does not substitute for the Kra Canal, but, if completed, will contribute to weakening the British choke-point in the Malacca Strait.