In late 2018 British Petroleum (BP), in partnership with US-based Kosmos Energy, gained approval from the Mauritania and Senegal governments to commence drilling their Tortue-Ahmeyim project, a huge hydrocarbons exploration under the seabed, covering 33,000 square kilometres and involving drilling to a water depth of about 3,000 metres. This is expected to produce 15 trillion cubic feet of gas over the next 20 years or so. BP describe their investments as hugely important for the region, and claim that they are “committed to operating in a transparent, ethical and sustainable way.”
BP’s acquisition of mining rights for Tortue-Ahmeyim have been at the heart of a major corruption scandal in Senegal involving millions of dollars being paid by the company to the previous rights holders, which included the President’s brother. While this is possibly the biggest political risk facing BP now, less well publicised is that a group of the world’s leading marine scientists have written an open letter to BP outraged at its Environmental and Social Impact Assessment. This ignored their considerable scientific research and has allowed BP to commence installing underwater pipelines through the world’s largest deep-water coral reef. The letter was written shortly before the governments of Senegal and Mauritania issued their approval for commencement of the drilling operations. In December 2018, BP promised the scientists a detailed response to their complaints, but this has not been produced yet and their correspondence with the scientists has merely offered to help support them with mutually beneficial research opportunities.
International Conservation of Cold Coral Reefs
Knowledge about deep water cold coral reefs has emerged slowly, as technology has enabled underwater mapping and then photos and videos taken from remotely operated vehicles. However over twenty years ago the importance of these ecosystems became internationally recognised. In 2004 the UN Environment Programme, the governments of the UK, Norway and Ireland, as well as WWF, produced a land-mark document entitled “Cold-water Coral Reefs; Out of sight, but no longer out of mind”. It was written by a group of international scientists, with the lead author also being a member of the group writing to BP last year. The document described how these reefs are exceptionally complex, long lived and diverse, and that they are vital for the breeding of marine wildlife, including commercially important fish species. They are also thought to be exciting for pharmaceutical research and form important bio-archives for scientists studying climate change. However, they are extremely fragile. The most obvious damage has been caused by bottom trawling and dredging for fish, but the report also highlighted how destructive offshore oil and gas can be. The then Minister for the Environment in Norway, Borge Brende, introduced the publication by saying:
‘These reefs are underwater oases, biological treasures and important habitats for fish. It is amazing that such major new discoveries can still be made. The reefs are slow growing and extremely fragile, and must, as a matter of urgency, be protected from further damage.’
In the lead up to this publication, the government of Norway took the step to ban bottom trawling and oil and gas exploration on cold coral reefs in Norwegian waters. In 2004, the UK also gained approval from the European Commission to ban trawling and other types of disruptive activities on the Darwin Grounds cold coral reef in North East Atlantic.
A sham of an environmental impact assessment?
The group of scientists writing to BP include many who are internationally recognised and have been working on the marine ecosystems of Mauritania for years. Part of this research stems from the discovery in the early 2000s of the unique deepwater corals by oil and gas exploration company, Woodside. This ecosystem is thought to be over 200,000 years old. The company shared their findings with British, Spanish, Dutch and German researchers, who went on to undertake a number of expeditions. Woodside, an Australian company, also published a report with Australian scientists recognising the damages oil and gas exploration could have. As a result, the Mauritanian deep sea now belongs to one of the best studied areas in the World. The sceintists complaining to BP argue that because of this, BP’s Tortue-Ahmeyim project could apply a similar level of environmental standards in Mauritania found in places such as Norway.
BP and Kosmos contracted the US consulting firm CSA Ocean Sciences and the Canadian consultants Golder Associates to undertake their environmental assessment. But these firms do not have the expertise to undertake the detailed analysis required, and throughout their work they did not consult with any of the leading marine biologists and scientists working in this region. As a result, their report contained some remarkable errors, suggesting that it was a ‘cut and paste’ job borrowing from other reports from different parts of the world. For instance, the list of fish species and marine mammals identified in the project area off Mauritania are not all found there. The list of the largest marine animals was incomplete and failed to include the omura whale, a species recently discovered in the area which has generated international coverage. Many of the coral and other benthic species cited by BP were never found in the region by public research institutes, and are endemic to the Gulf of Mexico.
This level of analysis is common in such reports paid for by mining companies; famously, BP’s disaster risk assessment for its Deep Water Horizon well off the Gulf of Mexico identified sea lions, seals, sea otters and walruses—creatures from the Artic not found there.
Yet the most controversial mistake made by CSA was to downplay the existence and importance of the deep water coral reef that the pipeline from BP and Kosmos’s project is going to cut through. This spans about 600km (and potentially further, although less is known on what exists on the other side of the border with Senegal), making it the biggest known deep-water coral reef anywhere on the planet.
The contracted evaluation described the whole reef as mostly dead, and claims that BP has chosen a path that does not impact ‘relics of carbonate mounds’. This claim was made by the consultants who reported having done extensive underwater mapping with the aid of a remotely operated vehicle. This is very hard to believe. The independent scientists, in their open letter to BP write:
“The photos taken with a Remotely Operated Vehicle clearly show living Lophelia pertusa, which you fail to recognise. Lophelia is categorised by the European Commission's Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) as a reef-forming coral species creating critical habitat for fishery resources - the main pillar for long-term development of the West African societies.”
Although the coral reef is indeed degraded—parts of it are inactive and its future is in doubt from warming oceans caused by climate change—it remains one of the most biodiverse spots off the Mauritania coastline, critical for the survival of endemic biodiversity. In addition, BP’s pipeline will trespass one of the five most sensitive parts of the reef identified by scientists. It is also the only area where the Instituto Española de Oceanografia found black coral—a species that is among the oldest living organisms in the world. Furthermore, deep water coral reefs are highly productive carbon sinks, and given the age of the reef it is a unique archive holding a detailed record of how our climate evolved over the past 200,000 years
Given the value of this coral reef, several scientists have been proposing the area to be designated as a deep-water marine protected area. This would be disastrous for BP, as they have committed not to drill in or near marine protected areas.
The scientists are also frustrated about the fact that the report seems to have been deliberately kept hidden from peer review. It was never published or shared widely. The scientists only saw it when the Dutch Government convinced the Government of Senegal that they would pay for a review of the social and environmental assessments undertaken by oil and gas companies in their waters. The Senegalese government accepted the offer, and then shared the report. But all this was too late; a month after raising their concerns with the review, the governments of Senegal and Mauritania issued their approvals.
The legacy of ‘mainstreaming biodiversity in the oil and gas sector’
The consultants’ report also claims it was based on extensive consultations, involving at least 2,600 people in Mauritania and Senegal. The scientists have retorted that these consultations were public relation stunts. Given that the oil and gas companies were using such dubious science as the basis of their assessments, it was impossible for local people to be well informed about the potential impact.
About a decade ago, the United Nations Development Programme, in partnership with the Global Environment Facility, International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the German overseas development agency (GIZ), provided US$6 million for a five-year study to help Mauritania’s government mainstream biodiversity in its oil and gas sector, and therefore understand the environmental and social implications of oil and gas development better.
The initial project document highlighted extremely low capacity in Mauritania for monitoring the environmental impact of oil and gas, and the lack of necessary regulations and procedures. One of its recommendations was for Mauritania to monitor their marine environment as part of a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) for oil and gas developments. These are normal in developed countries and provide an overall plan to manage underwater and coastal developments, before exploration or applications for drilling are granted. Unlike EIAs, these are not financed by oil companies, but are based on public financed research. An SEA was never done, although the UNDP-based study did provide considerable information and data archives for the government and companies to use, and specifically highlighted the importance of the biodiversity reliant on the cold water coral reef precisely where BP and Kosmos are now operating.
All of this seems to have been ignored by the Mauritanian government, BP, Kosmos and CSA Consulting. It is impossible to believe this was an oversight, particularly as the Health and Safety manager of Kosmos was previously hired as a consultant for the UNDP’s project.
The lack of an independent Strategic Environmental Assessment is problematic given the inherent conflicts of interest involved in oil and gas projects. Besides the common problem of government and political elites receiving kick-backs or bribes from the mining sector — as is alleged to be have been the case in Senegal — often oil and gas projects are joint venture agreements, with a profit sharing arrangement for the national host government. In both Senegal and Mauritania their state-owned oil and gas companies have a 10% stake in the project, although details of benefit-sharing arrangements between BP, Kosmos and the national governments of both countries have not been put in the public domain. Thus, there is a strong commercial incentive for both the governments and oil companies not to have stringent environmental regulations in place. This should be a major cause for concern.
“A gift from God”
The idea that consultations were a public relations stunt designed to ensure BP and Kosmos, as well as the governments, achieved what they wanted, is also revealed in the consultants’ report where it describes community concerns (CFFA has a copy, but it is too large to post here). The assessors acknowledged that small-scale fishers in particular were worried about the environmental impact of the development, and noted that they were unlikely to be compensated for disruptions in their fishing. Communities were aware of what has happened elsewhere, such as in Nigeria where oil and gas companies have destroyed coastal ecosystems. These concerns were duly noted, but the consultants countered them by saying that ‘experienced’ members of fishing communities recognised the benefits of oil and gas, adding, in an extraordinary claim, that, “although stakeholders have concerns about potential negative impacts of the project, the consultation process has highlighted a general trend that gas discovery in Mauritania and Senegal is a gift from God.”
The World Bank has not helped. Despite making a pledge in 2017 to withdraw financing for oil and gas projects, on environmental grounds, the Bank issued a grant of US$29 million to Senegal in 2017, and one of US$20 million to Mauritania in 2018. The ostensible purpose of the grants was to strengthen the negotiating powers of the governments in dealing with oil and gas companies, and also to help develop communication strategies to ensure support by investors and national stakeholders.
Since the approval of the contracts for BP and Kosmos in 2018, Mauritania’s small-scale fishing organisations have gone public with their concerns about the process and the potential impact. This has not gone well. Following a press release by the fishers, a spokesperson for small-scale fisheries was allegedly threatened by the Ministry of Environment and told to end further publicity.
Buying friends and influence
The independent group of scientists have expressed concern over the neglect of stakeholder consultations. And Sandra Kloff, who has worked in Mauritania and Senegal for years and is regarded as a leading expert on marine biology in the region, is also concerned about the silence of international environmental NGOs in Mauritania and Senegal. Birdlife International, for example, have a bird-preservation project in Mauritania specifically aimed to reduce risks from the offshore oil and gas sector. Kloff has told them about the threats to seabirds caused by offshore oil and gas developments. Yet Birdlife have so far not been vocal critics of what BP are doing. The awkward possibility is that this may be because they are part funded by BP.
Indeed, this may point to a wider concern. BP spending on corporate social responsibility targets environmental organisations and causes. As BP states in a brochure: “In Senegal, as part of our commitment to environmental conservation in the region, we have helped train 50 members of the local community in biodiversity monitoring and management. We also provided equipment for wildlife parks in both Mauritania and Senegal.” One must question the purpose of this spending given how BP has shrugged off criticisms by some of the world’s leading marine biologists.
The independent scientists argue this sort of practice makes involvement of publicly financed research institutes, such as those in Spain, Netherlands and Germany critical for environmental protection. They are independent and are therefore essential experts to engage in these processes. While they recognise that some important research on marine biodiversity has been financed by oil and gas companies, including Woodside in Mauritania, independent scientists are not dependent on these grants to the same extent as NGOs, nor would they be easily bought off.
Sadly, this is not always the case. In March 2018, BP financed two seminars—one in Mauritania and one in Senegal—run by Oxford University’s Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies (Oxcarre) entitled ‘Oil & Gas Governance – Learning from the Past’. The seminar in Dakar was led by Sir Paul Collier, one of the leading academics in this field. One would hope that, being run by such a prestigious University and people, the familiar governance problems associated with oil and gas would have been identified. That they were not may have had something to do with the fact that although Oxcarre is part of the Department of Economics at Oxford University, as it reveals on its website, it was established with a generous grant from BP.
Putting the corrupting influence of corporate social responsibility aside, the immediate challenge is to oblige BP, Kosmos and the governments of Mauritania and Senegal to acknowledge the flaws in their EIA, and to arrange a serious international and independent assessment of the ecological and social impacts of this project, before drilling and installation go much further, bearing in mind that BP is already contracting US and Norwegian engineering firms to install equipment in the seabed, under a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
One should not prejudge the outcome of that assessment, but it would be deeply irresponsible for the companies to go ahead on the basis of what has been done so far in assessing the potential environmental damage. We need to find ways of putting pressure on those responsible to show that responsibility.