- The Republic of Congo plans to nearly double its oil production over the next three years, including drilling in protected areas like Conkouati-Douli National Park, sparking outrage from environmental activists and civil society groups.
- This expansion directly contradicts the country’s climate commitments made at the 2023 U.N. climate conference and its stated goals of preserving biodiversity.
- Major international oil companies — including TotalEnergies, Perenco, and Chinese firms — are supporting this fossil fuel push despite past pollution scandals and a lack of public environmental impact assessments.
- Critics also warn of systemic corruption and resource mismanagement, questioning whether the projected revenues will benefit the public as fuel shortages and extreme climate impacts continue to hit the country.
The Republic of Congo’s recently announced plans to double oil production over the next three years puts it “fatally at odds” with its own stated goals for a clean energy transition, activists warn.
The country currently produces 270,000 barrels of oil a day, but Bruno Jean Richard Itoua, the minister of hydrocarbons, said at an energy and investment forum in Brazzaville in March that he wants to see this grow to 500,000 barrels daily. This increase will include drilling inside up to a quarter of Conkouati-Douli National Park, after the government in February 2024 granted an exploration permit to a joint venture of the state-owned oil company and China Oil Natural Gas Overseas Holding Limited.
That policy has been roundly condemned by local and international civil society organizations.
“On a strategic level, the government is working to safeguard biodiversity, but on a practical level, they are fatally at odds with this in the way they exploit it,” Placide Kaya, a mangrove expert and activist, told Mongabay, adding the government is speaking with “two voices.”
“We shouldn’t normally touch protected areas because they are refuges for national biodiversity,” he said. “If we touch these areas, the Congo will be vulnerable to the disappearance of several species.”
And the oil drilling plans don’t appear to stop at Conkouati-Douli National Park, Kaya said: “There’s the Conkouati-Douli park, there’s the Dimonika reserve … All the nature reserves in the country, especially in the southern part, are going to be disrupted.”
Kaya said it remains to be seen what the oil companies will do to mitigate the impact of their exploration activities on the environment. So far, he said, no environment and social impact studies have been made available to the public.
At the COP28 climate summit in 2023, the Republic of Congo was among the signatories to an agreement signaling the “beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era. At the time, President Denis Sassou Nguesso said: “As far as climate change is concerned, the diagnosis has been made. The issues are known. The solutions have been identified. It is just the right effort of solidarity and equity that is incumbent on all countries called upon to work together for a safer planet Earth, safe from the threats and other harmful effects of climate change.”
The effects of climate change are already being felt in the Republic of Congo: rainfall has become more irregular and extreme, leading to increasingly frequent flooding. Last year alone, severe flooding due to exceptionally heavy rains left more than 336,000 people in need of emergency humanitarian assistance.
Yet since COP28, the government has leaned even more into fossil fuels.
At the March energy and investment forum, Minister Itoua declared the oil and gas industry “the lever for transformation and economic recovery” of the country. At the same event, French oil giant TotalEnergies announced it would support the Republic of Congo’s oil and gas production drive, and step up its exploration and drilling activities. Anglo-French company Perenco, too, announced it would aim to exceed 100,000 barrels of oil per day, while China’s Wing Wah said it wants to increase oil production by 50% this year.
A recent investigation by Mongabay found that the oil terminal operated by TotalEnergies for more than 50 years in the coastal town of Djeno has persistently polluted the local marine environment. Internal TotalEnergies documents provided by the NGO Climate Whistleblower showed the French company had failed to implement adequate compensatory measures for the pollution generated.
In addition to oil, the Republic of Congo is also planning to boost its natural gas sector. The government plans to set up a national gas company in the near future, as well as a gas code and a road map to attract investment.
Activists have highlighted another issue arising from new oil and gas projects in the country: corruption.
“The problem is to know whether these resources will go to the Treasury or whether intermediaries through various corrupt processes will ensure that this money will also evaporate and not benefit the country,” Andréa Ngombet, founder of the anticorruption movement Sassoufit, told Mongabay. “Sassoufit” is a play on both President Sassou’s name and the French expression “ça suffit,” meaning “enough is enough.”
Corruption scandals involving the country’s resources and members of the presidential clan have made headlines several times. In 2023, for instance, the French investigative media outlet Disclose revealed that several members of the Sassou Nguesso family were involved in a financial scandal linked to an oil field operated by Perenco.
And despite the Republic of Congo being the third-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, the country experienced a major fuel shortage last year.
The Republic of Congo is part of the Congo Basin, the planet’s second-largest tropical rainforest and largest tropical peatland. The Congo Basin harbors an extraordinary diversity of life, including thousands of plant species, hundreds of bird and mammal species, and a myriad of insects, with biodiversity found nowhere else on Earth.
The Ministry of Hydrocarbons did not respond to Mongabay’s request for an interview by the time this story was published.
Banner image: A mother and baby chimpanzee in the mangroves of Conkouati-Douli National Park. Image by Discover Corps via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).
Credits
