Perenco SA should not be allowed to keep operating under such impunity. In 2022 alone, Perenco caused major oil spills in Gabon, damaged protected mangroves in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and invaded indigenous land in the Amazon. These are not standalone incidents. Since Perenco's operations began in 1992, the company has become known among members of civil society as a notorious cost-cutting oil and gas producer with little to no regard for people or the environment. The year of its 30th anniversary was no different.
Perenco is owned by one of France's wealthiest families via a network of holding companies in tax havens such as the Bahamas and Bermuda.19336 The 2016 Panama Papers leaks showed that Perenco was held by over 60 holdings in the Bahamas alone.19337 Being privately owned and with relatively few employees, Perenco is not subject to the same transparency laws as other multinationals.19338 Its operations abroad are structured via a network of subsidiaries that make attributing legal responsibility challenging. It has headquarters in both London and Paris. Essentially, its company structure enables Perenco to avoid legal liability and scrutiny for its activities.19338 This means Perenco is operating unchecked despite being Europe’s 11th largest oil and gas producer in 2022. 19339
Note: Reputational risk projects on GOGEL are updated annually. This article was last updated June 6 2024.
Since its inception, Perenco has operated as a “low-cost” oil and gas company.19340 Perenco has long focused on acquiring mature oil and gas assets nearing the end of their life cycles – extracting profits from assets considered no longer cost-effective by its competitors. The cost-cutting required to make this approach profitable leaves no space for people and nature. Environmental precautions are thereby, in the words of a former company executive, “incompatible” with Perenco’s business model.19341
Perenco is currently attempting to shift away from its reliance on scavenging aging and unwanted infrastructure. Its ambition to become active in gas-fired power, carbon capture and storage, and other subsectors of the industry should not fool investors into believing the company will become squeaky clean. Perenco’s plans are progressing despite the fact that over the years, numerous NGO and media investigations have highlighted the company’s utter disregard for its employees, local communities and the environment.193421934319344 In 2022, Perenco showcased the wide reach of its recklessness. It was just another year on the record for the company, a perfect snapshot of its business model as a whole: a cynical drive to push down costs and flaunt any type of environmental precaution. The events described here are a continuation of a trend, one which is likely to worsen as the company continues to expand.
Oil Spills and Intimidation in Gabon
On the western-most tip of Gabon, right below the equator, Perenco owns the aging Cap Lopez oil terminal.19345 Perenco has produced all the natural gas in the country since 2006 and is Gabon’s third largest oil producer.1934619347 In April 2022, Perenco identified a leak at the Cap Lopez terminal that spilled 300,000 barrels of oil.19348This was Perenco’s seventeenth recorded oil spill in four years in Gabon alone.19349 The company had been operating the terminal for just six months prior to the leak.19350 Ensuring it would run incident-free was apparently not a priority. Perenco and the Gabonese state were quick to issue statements claiming the pollution incident was contained and had not affected the shoreline or neighboring environment. Footage obtained from activists and Perenco employees showed that this was far from the truth.19351 They witnessed the spill overflowing from the site’s containment basins and reaching the coast.
In Gabon as well as in its other locations, Perenco has repeatedly been accused of failing to report or remedy spills.1935219353 Residents of Etimboué in Western Gabon, where multiple spills have occurred, claim the company simply buries oil and drilling waste directly in the ground.1935419355 Perenco has also been accused of intimidating residents and firing employees who dare sound the alarm.19356 Still, local NGOs are fighting back. In 2021, the Network of Free Civil Society Organisations for Good Governance in Gabon filed a lawsuit against Perenco for allegedly widespread violations of environmental law in the country. The investigations are ongoing, though some observers fear Perenco’s ties to the country’s ruling family could hamper legal proceedings.19357 Corruption allegations have long surrounded the company, not least in Gabon.19358193591936019361
Never-ending Health Impacts in the DRC
Perenco is the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s only oil producer - although that is soon expected to change. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Perenco extracts 20,000 barrels a day from a block that overlaps with a protected mangrove ecosystem.1936219363 The Mangroves National Park is home to numerous spectacular species, such as the critically endangered manatee, goliath herons and mountain gorillas.19364 Mangroves are also extremely effective carbon sinks.19365 Calculations by Investigate Europe, Disclose and EIF attribute more than 160 spills in this sensitive area to Perenco’s activities over the past 15 years.19366
In April 2022, local NGO RENAD renewed accusations against Perenco concerning the impacts of its operations in Moanda, where its blocks are located. The report came 10 years after a Congolese senate-led commission came to similar conclusions.1936719368 It accuses the company of routinely flaring methane, despite its clear environmental and health impacts and a national ban against the practice. The report further calls out Perenco for dumping sludge and other toxic waste into waterways and rudimentary pits, as well as establishing oil wells adjacent to farms and communities.1936919370 These are not new accusations.1937119372 Residents have reported severe skin and respiratory illnesses, while blood tests have shown high levels of toxins and chemicals typically related to oil and gas extraction, such as heavy metals and volatile organic compounds.19373 Perenco’s negligence has also caused crops to fail and fish populations to dwindle.19374 It should come as no surprise, then, that the environmental groups Sherpa and Friends of the Earth France filed a lawsuit against Perenco in November 2022. The lawsuit seeks damages for the environmental destruction the company has caused in the DRC.19375 Even being able to file the lawsuit was a hard-fought victory. The NGOs and Perenco had been battling in the courts since before 2019. Back then, the company flat out ignored a judge’s order to hand over evidence of its environmental and social impacts to the organizations, arguing it wasn’t subject to French legislation.19376 Dodging responsibility is the name of the game for Perenco.
Ignoring Indigenous Rights in Peru
Up until late 2022, Perenco extracted crude oil from Lot 67 in Iquitos, Peru.19377 In keeping with its trend of recklessness in the world’s most environmentally sensitive areas, the concession is located within the Amazon Rainforest and overlaps with the land of Indigenous communities.1937819379 Perenco obtained Lot 67 in 2008, using an environmental impact assessment that has long been criticized as outdated and inadequate by experts.19380 The company also failed to consult potentially affected Indigenous communities as mandated by international law, instead claiming none lived nearby.19381 The report Perenco bases this argument on was commissioned by the company itself and was found to have buried evidence of Indigenous dwellings.19382
Since the early 2000s, there has been mounting evidence of uncontacted and isolated Indigenous communities living in the vicinity of Lot 67.19383 Uncontacted communities are among the most vulnerable people on earth.19384 Contact with them risks spreading diseases and decimating populations, as has occurred on numerous occasions in the past.1938519386 As they are believed to be primarily hunter-gatherers, their reliance on the rainforest’s resources further entrenches their vulnerability to outside influence. This concern is particularly justified considering Perenco’s track record. In 2022, the Peruvian government recognized the presence of uncontacted Indigenous communities in the region, initiating procedures to legally establish the Napo-Tigre Indigenous Reserve. This move would safeguard the Indigenous communities’ basic human rights, as well as the forest, plants and ecosystems they rely on. It would further protect the carbon-absorbing qualities of healthy rainforests.
Perenco’s response was to file an injunction opposing the Indigenous Reserve.19387 Although it has since withdrawn the injunction following public outrage, Perenco’s response perfectly illustrates where its priorities lie.19388 Its next move paints the picture even clearer: Perenco subsequently declared force majeure at the site, leaving employees in limbo and allowing Perenco the company to ignore its obligations such as environmental remediation or well decommissioning.19389
Suing the Sovereign State of Ecuador
In 2022, Perenco had a sovereign nation’s bank accounts frozen. The background for this scandalous step dates back to 2006. In 2006, Ecuador’s economy was struggling.19390 At a time of exceptionally high oil and gas prices, then-president Rafael Correa raised the taxation of oil and gas companies’ windfall profits to 50% and then 99%.19391 From the beginning, Perenco refused to pay. It challenged the decision in court and insisted on depositing the payments into a separate account until a new tax agreement could be negotiated with authorities.19392
Ecuador’s government responded by seizing some of Perenco’s producing assets in the country.19393 Perenco further escalated the situation by suing the country for USD 1.4 billion, based on a bilateral investment treaty between Ecuador and France. Suddenly the company did claim to be subject to French law, which it refuses to accept when it comes to environmental and human rights due diligence cases. It is revealing to note how the company cherry picks legal jurisdictions according to how convenient they are to its interests. The World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes eventually decided in May 2021 that Ecuador should pay the company USD 374 million for the dispute.19394
In August 2022, while Ecuador’s government hoped to negotiate terms for the payments due to liquidity issues, Perenco had the sovereign country’s bank accounts in Luxembourg frozen.19395 Perenco acted within its legal rights, considering that the payment from the Ecuadorian government was delayed. However, the Ecuador case clearly shows Perenco’s absolute disregard for the countries and communities it claims to be helping. It is scandalous that a company so lenient in its approach to environmental protection, public health, and general regulations can have such an uncompromising impact on a sovereign nation’s economy.
Continuing Along the Same Path
The cases listed above are all from 2022 and represent just a fragment of Perenco’s history. Over the years, the company has been linked to the funding of paramilitary organizations in Colombia, illegal gas flaring in the protected areas of Cameroon, fracking in Tunisia, and corruption in Guatemala.19396193971939819399 It is currently under investigation by French prosecutors for suspected corruption in various African countries.19400 In March 2024, five employees died after a fire broke out at Perenco’s offshore Becuna platform in Gabon.1940119402 A year earlier, Perenco suffered a pipeline rupture in Gabon’s Lake Anengué, causing immense damage to fish populations and everyone depending on them.19403 One month after the pipeline rupture, Perenco spilled reservoir fluids into Poole Harbour in the UK, a protected area surrounded by a bird sanctuary and a nature reserve.19404 The company had previously received warnings from British authorities concerning 237 overdue repair works critical for the safety of its operations in the area.19405 Clearly, the warnings were not enough. Currently, the company plans to build an LNG terminal and a gas-fired power plant in Gabon, is preparing carbon capture and storage projects in the UK, and continues to bid for oil and gas licenses around the world.1940619407194081940919410 To continue expanding its business, Perenco has secured financing from banks such as BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered and others.19411 BNP Paribas was itself targeted in a 2022 lawsuit by French NGOs for a lack of human rights and climate-related due diligence due to its continued financing of fossil fuels.19412
Groups Working on Perenco: Ressources Naturelles et Développement (RENAD), Disclose, ASSO Sherpa, Organización Regional de Pueblos Indígenas del Oriente (ORPIO), Réseau des Organisations Libres de la Société Civile Pour la Bonne Gouvernance (ROLBG)
Further Reading: https://disclose.ngo/en/investigations/perenco-files
