AMEC

This article is part of the Nuclear Spin project of Spinwatch.

AMEC is one of Britain's leading engineering project management and consultancy companies, listed on the London Stock Exchange and the FTSE 100. It operates in some 700 locations and 40 countries across the globe and employs over 27,000 people.

Background

AMEC has worked in the nuclear sector since the birth of the industry almost 60 years ago and today employs over 2000 specialists in this field. It says it is "the largest UK private sector supplier of programme management and engineering services to the industry... We ensure the safe and efficient operation of nuclear plants, from concept through to decommissioning.

Clients as of 2012 include Sellafield Limited, OPG, Bruce Power, AWE Aldermaston, Rolls Royce, BAE, and EDF Energy which now incorporates British Energy. Past clients include the British Nuclear Group and UKAEA and a wide range of international nuclear operators'.

One of its main subsidiary companies is AMEC NNC "an international nuclear engineering services company".

AMEC's nuclear partnerships

Nuclear Management Partners

Richard Caborn, a former Labour trade minister was appointed in 2007 as a non-executive director of Nuclear Management Partners until 2009.

Nuclear lobbying

Tetra Strategy has provided public affairs consultancy services to AMEC since August 2007, when it won the account previously handled by Good Relations. Tetra told PR Week it would "lobby ministers and officials to ensure that AMEC’s name is in the frame when major public infrastructure projects are discussed" and would lobby on nuclear power as AMEC is a major player in the new build of nuclear power stations in the UK.

On 23 March 2005 AMEC had invited some of Britain's most senior business journalists for breakfast at the St Stephen's Club in Westminster. Speakers at the event included David King, the government chief scientist, Brian Wilson, the former energy minister, and Dipesh Shah, chief executive of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, who made a pitch for nuclear energy in order "to stop the lights going out".

A Lucrative Nuclear Waste Clean up

A consortium including AMEC, British Nuclear Group Project Services, NIS Ltd, DGP International, and Weir Strachan & Henshaw was chosen to build a £100 million pound facility at the nuclear plant at Dounreay to treat fast reactor fuel reprocessing wastes. The project is the largest project yet to be undertaken by the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency.

AMEC is also said to have teamed up with the UKAEA and the American company CH2M in order to bid for £56bn worth of clean-up work at Britain's civil nuclear sites. The work, including decommissioning 20 electricity generation, fuel reprocessing and nuclear research sites is said to be valued at £2bn a year.

The AMEC partnership faced fierce competition from British Nuclear Group, which operated BNFL's four sites including Sellafield, as well as a host of foreign companies such as the controversial American company Bechtel, Fluor, and the French firm Cogema.

CH2M Hill is a leading engineering company that has been cited by American Democrats as having a "conflict of interest" in its work in Iraq. Its new president is the former American Department of Energy Assistant Secretary Jessie Roberson.

A conflict of interest on waste and new build?

Also see CoRWM pages on AMEC's role on the supposedly independent committee. AMEC NNC has been acting as CoRWM’s programme manager, as well as managing the discussion at its plenary meetings, organizing its public consultation and procurements procedures as well as its PR company, Luther Pendragon. In fact Luther Pendragon is not contracted to CoRWM at all, but to AMEC NNC.

So here is a nuclear company with a vested interest in new build acting as consultants to the committee that is deciding what to do with nuclear waste, which is one of the last roadblocks in the way of new build. This is admitted by AMEC. In an article entitled “Waste management strategy critical for nuclear new build” Sam Usher from AMEC NNC tells the company’s in house magazine “There is an argument that you shouldn’t build new nuclear power stations if you can’t manage the waste from existing ones”.

AMEC NNC has a vested interest in both decommissioning and nuclear new build, a fact implicitly recognized by AMEC NNC about its CoRWM contract. “This is a high profile contract that puts AMEC at the leading edge of developing nuclear strategy – not only in the waste management industry, but to have an influence on new build”...

At the same time as working for CoRWM, AMEC NNC is promoting is own patented technology for radioactive waste. “One technology that might help with the problem of radioactive waste is GeoMelt®, a propriety AMEC technology”. A paper discussing the GeoMelt technology has even been discussed at CoRWM meetings.

AMEC NNC has a dedicated section on its website talking about “the benefits our history brings to Nuclear New Build” where the company states it “has a skilled, competent and well-balanced workforce committed to supporting the UK Nuclear Industry and we are eagerly looking forward to the opportunity to use our abilities in support of new nuclear plants”.

Dams and pipelines

In 2003, when AMEC announced that it had 99.96% approval for the takeover of the French firm SPIE Batignolles, eyebrows were raised. At the time, SPIE was in the middle of a court case involving bribery allegations in the construction of a controversial dam as part of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. High ranking officials at the project were imprisoned for taking bribes from multinationals including SPIE and Canada's Acres International.

The dam scheme in southern Africa attracted the attention of environmentalists who claimed that 27,000 people and hundreds of subsistence farming households were affected but had not been properly compensated. The project, which was intended to divert water from Lesotho to South Africa, was first conceived during the Apartheid era when South Africa was subject to international sanctions. To avoid the difficulties of international financiers openly aiding the then-apartheid regime, the project's financial advisers – Chartered WestLB – set up a London-based trust fund through which payments could be laundered.

AMEC was also involved in the construction of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline. Its responsibility in the project was to build a section through a Georgian national park, which produces Borjomi Mineral Water, Georgia's largest export.

It was also part of the consortium that built Britain's first toll motorway – the Birmingham Northern Relief Road. The consortium expects to receive more than £2bn from people using it. The road will destroyed 27 miles of the West Midlands green belt and damaged two SSSIs. AMEC also has an 11 per cent interest in the Cross Israel Highway Concession.

Iraq contracts

In 2002, 60 per cent of AMEC's turnover was generated outside of the UK. AMEC's chief executive at the time, Sir Peter Mason, said prior to the war on Iraq: "If there is a war, we might see more work afterwards. We were involved in Kuwait the last time." In 2004 it was awarded major reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

Resources

• See also the Powerbase profile AMEC: Use of Lobby Groups
• Friends of the Earth UK has published many articles and a briefing on AMEC. See: http://www.foe.org.uk/ Do a search on AMEC on the FoE website.
• A resource on corporations and dambuilding: 'Dams Incorporated, The Record of Twelve European Dam Building Companies', February 2000, A Report by The CornerHouse, Chris Lang, Nick Hildyard, Kate Geary, Matthew Grainger, Published by The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.

Website

www.amec.com