By the smell of oil profits enticed.
The Democratic Republic of Congo will proceed, Thursday July 28 and Friday July 29, with the call for tenders for the granting of the rights of exploitation of 27 blocks of oil and three blocks of natural gas.
A flagship project for the government of President Félix Tshisekedi, which presents this operation as a new page in the economic history of the country.
The government estimates that with potential untapped reserves capable of producing up to one million barrels of oil per day, the country could generate an oil rent of more than 30 billion dollars per year, explains the New York Times.
With a potential estimated at 22 billion barrels of crude oil, distributed in the 3 sedimentary basins and 66 billion NM3 of methane gas in Lake Kivu, investing in the hydrocarbon sector is propelling the DRC among the major oil producers and gas.
pic.twitter.com/La1SHGJiZx
— Ministry of Hydrocarbons DRC (@Min_HydroRDC) July 22, 2022
Turmoil in the bog
But faced with this argument, scientists and NGOs denounce an initiative that would endanger one of the most important carbon sinks in the world: the rainforest of the Congo Basin.
"We ask the president to cancel this suicidal project for our environment because these auctions risk having a negative impact on the climate, biodiversity and local communities", assures Patient Muamba, who deals with the defense of tropical forests. for Greenpeace Africa.
On Tuesday, he delivered to the country's presidency a petition signed by more than 100,000 people who oppose the oil auction.
"100,000 people is good, but we represent a country and the interests of its [nearly] 100 million inhabitants and we are not going to undergo the diktat of an NGO", retorted Didier Budimbu, the Minister of Hydrocarbons, during a press conference organized the same day.
This battle more specifically concerns nine blocks out of the 27 auctioned.
They are located on the territory of the immense tropical forest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and more specifically of the Central Cuvette, which shelters a vast area of peatland considered as a world treasure of biodiversity and an asset in the fight against global warming. .
What angers NGOs like Greenpeace all the more is that the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo is aware of the importance of this unique ecosystem.
Less than a year ago at COP26 in Glasgow, Felix Tshisekedi pledged to protect this forest for ten years in exchange for international financial support of $500 million.
This agreement, co-signed with then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was hailed as "historic" by the United Nations.
Despite this agreement, the government decided in April to proceed with a call for tenders for 16 oil blocks, before extending these auctions to 27 blocks at the beginning of July, in order to "maximize the opportunities for the country", according to the Ministry of Hydrocarbons.
“We are very surprised by this reversal, because at the time of COP26, the president presented the Democratic Republic of Congo as a country with solutions for the climate crisis, and now it is about to become a country with problems”, regrets Patient Muamba.
"Potentially more polluting than coal mining"
The extent of the environmental problem has only recently been discovered.
It was only in 2017 that a team of scientists was able to carry out the first mapping of the peat bog in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The researchers then noted that it was "the largest region of tropical peatland in the world - about 165,000 km² [two thirds of this forest massif being on the territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the rest on that du Congo-Brazzaville, NDLR] – which is also the only tropical forest to still be a net carbon sink", summarizes Bart Crezee, geographer at the University of Leeds, who participated in the mapping of this region.
This region stores more CO2 than it releases.
The Central Cuvette forest thus represents one of the last natural barriers to global warming and, if it were to be damaged, "it would risk releasing all the CO2 stored for thousands of years, which would transform the Democratic Republic of Congo as a net emitter of greenhouse gases", explains Richard Sufo Kankeu, geographer at the University of Le Mans, who has worked on the Congo Basin forest.
The exploitation of oil deposits in this region would represent "the potentially most polluting resource extraction activity in the world, even more than the exploitation of coal", assures Bart Crezee.
The environmental impact of such an undertaking would effectively be double.
There would be the already well-documented effect of oil extraction on the climate, to which would be added the destruction of an ecosystem that could lead to the release of CO2 into the atmosphere.
"We estimate that the blocks of oil being auctioned cover around one million hectares of peatland, which means around six billion tonnes of CO2 could be released, equivalent to fourteen years of greenhouse gas emissions. greenhouse effect in the United Kingdom", summarized Simon Lewis, professor at University College London who led the mapping work of the peatland, in an article published on the site The Conversation.
The risk even begins at the exploration stage.
"Roads and other infrastructure will have to be built to carry out the oil exploration work, which will already disrupt the water cycle in the bog. And we know that it is the humidity of this environment that reduces the decomposition of organic matter which is the source of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere", warns Bart Crezee.
Of gorillas and men
From the moment when man sets foot economically interested in this tropical forest, it is likely to attract many people.
"We know from experience that when roads are built dedicated solely to industrial logging, previously inaccessible areas are opened up to harmful outside actors such as loggers and illegal loggers," said Norah Berk, who is following the case. of the rainforest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the NGO Rainforest Foundation UK.
Because it is not only the climate that would be threatened.
The announcement of the call for tenders had moved environmental NGOs because one of the blocks encroaches on Virunga National Park, a famous protected reserve on the border with Rwanda and Uganda, which is home to a large population of mountain gorillas, an endangered species.
"But it's not just the gorillas. The peat bog is home to a multitude of other species such as forest elephants, bonobos and African dwarf crocodiles. And we don't know everything yet. what else we will find", recalls Bart Crezee.
We know, however, that "millions of people depend on this forest to live", underlines Norah Berk.
She fears that the allocation of oil exploitation rights in this region will lead to the destruction of their way of life, and that some of them risk being expelled.
"We are not yet at this question. For the moment, we are going to allocate blocks to explore if there is oil in these regions", replied Didier Budimbu to a question posed by France 24 about the risk. of expropriation.
An oil windfall to reduce poverty
The Minister of Hydrocarbons has spared no effort in recent months to try to clear the land and promote this call for tenders.
He remembers that in 2014, the British documentary "Virunga" and the activism of two Hollywood stars - Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck - had overcome a previous attempt to exploit oil deposits in the region of Virunga.
"We are not going to allocate blocks without carrying out environmental impact studies", assured Didier Budimbu several times during Tuesday's press conference.
His ministry also indicated that technological progress now makes it possible to explore without necessarily endangering the environment.
Drilling can now be done with "surgical precision" to avoid affecting the peat bog, insisted Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, negotiator for the Democratic Republic of Congo on climate issues and adviser to the Minister of Hydrocarbons, to the New York Times.
But the government has not only defended itself against accusations of preparing the ground for an ecological disaster.
He was also very offensive: "Our priority is not to save the planet" but to generate growth and reduce poverty, hammered Tosi Mpanu Mpanu.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the poorest countries in the world with 60 million people living on less than $1.90 a day, according to a 2018 World Bank report.
Same story with Didier Budimbu.
"When we have such resources, it is not to use them as an ornament, but to benefit the country and its inhabitants," he says.
And to add: "Hydrocarbon deposits are only exploited at 4.5% of their potential, which sends shivers down the spine when you know how much poverty there is in our country."
The authorities also deplore a two-speed conviction.
The country is the subject of strong criticism while Joe Biden can go and ask Saudi Arabia to increase oil production without this upsetting NGOs too much, underlines the New York Times.
Ditto for Norway which, in the general indifference and a context of rising energy prices, announced its intention to exploit new oil deposits in the Arctic.
“We must not forget the political context in the Democratic Republic of Congo either,” assures Richard Sufo Kankeu.
A presidential election must be organized in 2023 and "the population will necessarily be more interested in new roads being built and civil servants being paid, rather than the climate being saved", affirms this researcher.
The oil windfall could then become a good electoral argument.
Still, the government will quickly find itself in an uncomfortable situation.
It is indeed in Kinshasa that the preparatory work for COP27 will begin in September, which will then take place in Egypt.
There is no doubt that the question of the future of the tropical forest will then be put on the table again.
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