{"id":53683,"date":"2023-05-31T11:42:02","date_gmt":"2023-05-31T11:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/?p=53683"},"modified":"2025-08-25T13:06:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T13:06:15","slug":"how-drcs-land-auction-to-big-oil-threatens-africas-biggest-carbon-sink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/blog\/53683\/how-drcs-land-auction-to-big-oil-threatens-africas-biggest-carbon-sink\/","title":{"rendered":"How DRC’s Land Auction To Big Oil Threatens The World’s Biggest Carbon Sink"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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At World Forestry Congress in Durban, where Greenpeace activists called on the delegates to take action to protect the Congo Basin Forest.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

The DRC government is auctioning off 30 oil and gas blocks in the Cuvette-Centrale Peatlands in the Congo Basin forest \u2014 the world\u2019s largest tropical peatland. Peatland soils are known as ‘carbon sinks’ because packed into them are immense stores of carbon that get released into the atmosphere when the ecosystem is disturbed.<\/p>\n\n

For context, The Congo Rainforest is the world’s biggest carbon sink. It contains the largest tropical peatlands in the world. These areas store around thirty billion tons of carbon.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Exploiting these lands for oil through this DRC land auction risks not only eliminating an essential tool for absorbing carbon emissions, but also risks the drying up of the peat and releasing already stored carbon into the atmosphere. A situation that would be catastrophic to the continent, as these rainforests and peatlands are responsible for a huge percentage of the regulation of Africa\u2019s climate.<\/p>\n\n

But first, a little background into the Congo Basin\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

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Congo Rainforest. An Aerial view of the Congolese rainforest. Taken on a flight from Kinshasa to Bumba.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

The Congo basin covers 530 million hectares (1.3 billion acres) in central Africa and represents 70% of the continent’s forested land. It hosts over a thousand bird species and more primates than any other place worldwide, including the great apes: gorillas, chimpanzees and Bonobos.<\/p>\n\n

Local communities have lived in the Congo Basin for more than 50,000 years. Today, 75 million people from over 150 distinct ethnic groups depend on the health of the forest that covers much of the Congo Basin peatland complex.<\/p>\n\n

Known as the Cuvette Centrale, this complex is the size of the whole country of Ghana and straddles the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo.<\/p>\n\n

The DRC (the country participating in this land auction to big oil) represents 60 per cent of the Congo basin which makes it the second most important country in the tropics for peat areas and peat carbon stocks. The DRC is also home to the second-largest tropical forest in the world, the Congo rainforest, which represents 10% of the world\u2019s tropical forests. <\/p>\n\n

Overall, the DRC\u2019s forests contain a total of 23.3 Gigaton of carbon (GtCO2e). Beyond that, it stores up to 30 Gigaton of carbon (GtCO2e) in peatlands in the Cuvette Centrale region equivalent to three years\u2019 global emissions from fossil fuels. <\/a><\/p>\n\n

What is at risk with this<\/strong> auctioning off of oil blocks<\/strong> in the DRC?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

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Greenpeace activists call on the delegates to take action to protect the Congo Basin Forest.<\/em> 
\u00a9 Mujahid Safodien \/ Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Brought together by UN Environment and other Global Peatlands Initiative partners, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo and Indonesia signed the Brazzaville Declaration in March 2018 to protect this complex. <\/p>\n\n

However, there is the risk of losing this biodiversity hotspot soon.<\/p>\n\n

On July 28, the country\u2019s government announced plans to auction 27 oil blocks and three gas blocks to the highest bidder. <\/p>\n\n

The Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI), a group of donor countries, currently chaired by Germany, signed a Letter of Intent with the DRC government at the COP26 in November 2021. Welcomed by US President Joe Biden, the agreement not only foresaw a lifting of the 20-year ban on new logging concessions, but it also greenlit oil and gas activity across the country.<\/p>\n\n

The $500 million Letter of Intent that CAFI signed with DRC at Glasgow on 2 November 2021 conspicuously lacks any clause banning oil activity either from forests, peatlands or even protected areas.<\/p>\n\n

With the auction of these oil blocks, local communities will definitely be taken hostage by politico-economic elites. Congolese oil will mean the disappearance of immense parts of the biodiversity that 100 million people depend on for fishing, agriculture and other traditional practices.<\/p>\n\n

The Congo Basin is also home to the Batwa and other local communities facing violence and discrimination. A group that will be displaced if these new oil fields are auctioned. The Congo Basin is also home to an estimated 3,000 species of animals, including the critically endangered Eastern Gorilla.<\/p>\n\n

Inviting big oil to the Congo rainforest: What exactly is the auction about?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

The more you think about it, the rainforests of the DRC might actually be one of the worst places in the world to drill for oil.  <\/p>\n\n

Simon Lewis, a professor at Leeds University and head of a British-Congolese research group called CongoPeat has warned there may not be substantial oil deposits beneath the Congo forests and if there are, getting them from extremely remote areas to global markets may not be economically viable. <\/p>\n\n

Yet even if exploration reveals no commercial-scale oil fields, it will seriously damage the rainforest\u2019s biodiversity.<\/p>\n\n

 A timeline of events that led us to this <\/strong>land auction to big oil<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

This all began on January 29th 2022<\/strong> when the Congolese Minister of Hydrocarbons Rubens Mikindo made an Announcement about the forthcoming auction of nineteen new oil blocks across the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n\n

From the beginning, we have called on the Government of the DRC to cancel the auctioning off of these oil blocks. DRC committed to becoming a “country-solution” to climate change, a position defended by the official Congolese delegation to COP 26 in Glasgow, their signing off of auctioning rights to big oil goes against this.<\/p>\n\n

In June 2022,<\/strong> we later found out that nine of the 16 oil blocks to be auctioned in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) overlap Protected Areas, including a national park, nature reserves, and a mangroves marine park. <\/p>\n\n

Despite the government’s reassurances that none of these zones are in environmentally sensitive zones, our analysis has shown that three of these overlap peatlands and at least 13 overlap protected areas, including Virunga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site (home to the last bastion of mountain gorillas) that\u2019s threatened by armed conflicts and now by the prospects of drilling.<\/p>\n\n

Minister Didier Budimbu, who had previously insisted that \u201cnone\u201d of the blocks overlaps Protected Areas, confirmed Greenpeace\u2019s findings in this video <\/a>provided by DRC\u2019s hydrocarbons ministry.<\/p>\n\n

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View of the Virunga National Park from the ICCN (Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature) headquarter in Rumangabo.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

On 18 July 2022<\/strong> \u2013 10 days before the launch of the auction \u2013 the Hydrocarbons Minister declared that the number of blocks on offer had increased from the 16 announced in April 2022 to 27 oil blocks. In addition to the 27 oil blocks, the rights to extract methane gas from three blocks in Lake Kivu were also announced to be up for auction.<\/p>\n\n

At his announcement in Kinshasa, he said that this tendering process of the oil blocks is a solution to the challenges of the development of the Hydrocarbons sector in the DRC in all aspects – already a problematic statement on its own. <\/p>\n\n

This is because now is not the time to embark on new Fossil fuel projects. We are in the midst of a climate crisis that disproportionately affects African people. We should be ramping up investments in renewable energy and expanding plans for community-led forest management. <\/p>\n\n

According to this New IPCC report all hands need to be on deck<\/a>. From the report, it is clear how severe the impacts of climate change already are, causing widespread losses and damages to people and ecosystems around the world. This is projected to escalate with every bit of further warming, drilling for oil will make a bad situation even worse.<\/p>\n\n

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Presentation of Petition to Congolese Government<\/em>
\u00a9 Junior D. Kannah \/ Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

On 25th July 2022,<\/strong> more than 100,000 people signed a petition calling on President F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to end the development of new oil and gas fields in the country. The petition was launched in July 2022  by Congolese and international NGOs and was handed over on 25th July 2022 by Greenpeace Africa activists to the DRC Presidency.<\/p>\n\n

2nd February 2023:<\/strong> Just last month, a coalition of civil society groups learned about a secret deal between Oil Minister Didier Budimbu, Nigerian gambling tycoon Chukwuma Ayodeji Ojuroye, and US consultancy GeoSigmoid. <\/p>\n\n

The secret deal involved Ojuroye\u2019s (the Nigerian tycoon) Emirati-registered firm Clayhall Group reserving two oil blocks in exchange for the pre-financing of geological surveys by GeoSigmoid. This was basically a separate tender away from the 27 oil blocks already up for auction<\/p>\n\n

This in itself is catastrophic but what adds insult to injury is that Congo\u2019s Oil Minister Mr. Budimbu\u2019s promoted the auction in his global communications campaign as transparent, only for this to come out to the light.<\/p>\n\n

In January 2023<\/strong>, the government had planned to announce which companies were bidding to drill for oil in the 27 areas of the DRC on Monday, January 30.<\/p>\n\n

But, on the Saturday before the deadline, hydrocarbons minister Didier Budimbu tweeted that the cut-off points had been pushed back to various dates between April and October 2023.<\/p>\n\n

We are not certain what exactly caused this push, but the combination of the global outcry of the environmental risks, human rights violations that this auction has already caused and will accuse down the road,  regulatory uncertainty in the sector, the huge logistical challenges of highly remote exploration, and on top of it all Congo’s higher political risk premium, may likely be the reason.<\/p>\n\n

Why are we opposed to gas and oil exploration in the Congo rainforest <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"Community
Community Gathering in a Village in the DRC<\/em>
\u00a9 Cl\u00e9ment Tardif \/ Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

The oil and gas auction in the Congo will undoubtedly have devastating impacts on the ecosystem and the biodiversity of the peatlands. The government remains intentionally blind to this fact because it insists on framing this as a major way to advance its economy. With nationalist rhetoric, the DRC government constantly reiterates that its duty is to its people and not the environment. <\/p>\n\n

This a misleading message because:<\/p>\n\n