Soco International Plc is the only company still intending to exploit
its licence in the Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic
Republic of Congo, the setting for the film Gorillas in the Mist.
In a study published today, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) calls
on Soco to follow Total, the French petro-giant, which promised in May
to halt its search for oil inside the 87-year-old reserve.
A baby mountain gorilla in Virunga National Park (Alamy)
London-based Soco holds rights to explore an area twice the size of
Kent, half of it inside the World Heritage Site park that is now
listed as “in danger”. It hosts 200 of the world’s remaining 880
mountain gorillas.
Britain “continues to oppose oil exploration” in the Virunga reserve
and urges companies including Soco to invest in Congo “responsibly and
sustainably, a Foreign Office spokesman said.
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WWF has calculated that even without oil the Virunga ecosystem could
generate £250 million a year from well-managed fishing, hydropower and
tourism schemes creating 45,000 new jobs.
By contrast, WWF said, oil exploration and production risks pollution
through spills and gas flaring, could force people off their land and
might trigger eruptions of the region’s several active volcanoes.
Increased encroachment on the reserve would likely cause a “ripple
effect” and disturb the gorillas, whose habitat lies 20 miles south of
Soco’s concession, according to Raymond Lumbuenamo, WWF’s director for
Congo.
“Two million people’s livelihoods depend one way or the other on the
park and the surrounding ecosystem, and there could be disastrous
consequences of oil extraction in what is already a very fragile
area,” he said.
The report’s authors drew parallels between an oil-producing Virunga
and Nigeria’s Delta region, where violence has soared and poverty
doubled since its first discoveries fifty years ago.
Eastern Congo is already even more unstable than the Niger Delta.
Rebel groups have warred with the corrupt national army for close to
20 years, mostly over control of existing mines producing gold and
coltan, used in mobile phones.
Congo’s government, based more than 1,000 miles away in Kinshasa,
holds little sway in the mountains and rainforests of the potentially
oil-rich east.
“In an area prone to violent conflict and lacking systematic
government legislation and enforcement, pollution-free extraction will
be extremely difficult, if not impossible to guarantee,” the WWF
report says.
“The longer the pipeline and the more remote the location, the more
difficult ensuring pipeline maintenance and protection becomes.”
Congo’s government granted Soco its licence for “scientific studies”
to assess the likelihood of striking oil, despite long-standing laws
against prospecting in protected areas.
“The DRC has the right to know what resources it has under the earth,
even if it’s in the park or the forest, anywhere,” Crispin Atama Tabe,
Congo’s oil minister, told local media last year.
No drilling is planned yet and current activities are restricted to
aerial surveys over the reserve and aircraft would not land within its
boundaries, said a spokesman for Soco.
The company has carried out extensive discussions with local
communities, wildlife officials in Congo and conservation groups
internationally to allay fears, she added.
“Development and environmental sustainability are not mutually
exclusive,” Rui de Sousa, Soco’s chairman, told The Daily Telegraph.
“The project is unlike other exploration projects in that it is
constrained by a strict step-by-step process that requires the direct
approval of the Congolese authorities at each phase.” There was a
“specific emphasis” on environmental monitoring and social investment,
Mr de Sousa said.
“The Virunga National Park has been in decline for many years,
officially falling below the standards required for a World Heritage
Site,” he said.
“The potential for development just might be the catalyst that
reverses this trend.”
