COLUMN | Perenco’s shame and Gabon’s lax standards: a fatal combination [Offshore Accounts]

In an industry is awash with cash and record profits, it is tragic to see five people confirmed dead in an accident on a Perenco platform offshore Gabon, and one other worker still missing, presumed also killed, as per the most recent update.

Last Wednesday, there was a fire on the Becuna platform in Simba oil field, the company reported, but the circumstances remain unclear – and are likely to remain so.

As a privately-owned company owned by one of France's richest families, Perenco has no public shareholders or investors to whom it must explain itself, and Gabon is a country with a shocking approach to safety.

Perenco billionaires breaking production records as personnel die

Perenco has no excuse for lax safely procedures given that it produces over 100,000 barrels per day equivalent in Gabon, and is owned by the billionaire Perrodo family, famed for their racing cars, castles and vineyards. Much of the family's billions in assets is held through shell companies in tax-havens, making it hard to track exactly what they own, but Forbes recently put the family's net worth at US$9.6 billion.

In 2020, we ran an extensive piece on Perenco's vertically-integrated business model. The company is focused on production and spends next to nothing on exploration… and it is not known whether it also spends next to nothing on safety and maintenance in Gabon, but I am hopeful that is an area that the company will address.

Instead, Perenco buys old, usually shallow-water fields from the majors and it squeezes costs, extending field life and trying to raise production from the mature assets. In 2023, it acquired "non-core" stakes in various fields in Congo from ENI for US$300 million. It owns its own anchor handlers, its own barges, its own FPSOs, and its own drilling rigs.

In 2017, Perenco paid US$350 million to buy five fields producing 13,000 barrels per day and a pipeline from TotalEnergies. Its presence in Gabon and neighbouring Cameroon and Congo was established buying old fields from TotalEnergies and its predecessor company Elf Petroleum. It has been phenomenally successful at raising production.

Now it appears that perhaps Perenco has cut costs too far.

A sad litany of accidents and deaths

This fatal accident off Gabon is just one of many to plague Perenco, suggesting a pattern of health and safety failures across the company's operations. For example:

• In April 2022, a 300,000-barrel oil spill was only averted at Perenco's Cap Lopez tank storage farm in Gabon when a leaking storage tank was pumped into an emergency retention facility. Perenco suspended its exports as it rushed to prevent any discharge into the sea.
• This incident was on top of the multiple spills in preceding years – Investigate Europe found that Perenco was responsible for 17 oil leaks in Gabon in four years including in February 2023, when a pipeline valve failed at Rembo-Kotto, one of Perenco's onshore fields. An eyewitness told the investigation that "tens of thousands of litres of oil flowed into the river and marshes where local people draw their water. Vegetation turned black and all the fish disappeared." The scenes were captured in this video.
• In 2023, Perenco spilled about 200 barrels of oil from a pipeline from its Wytch Farm onshore oilfield into Poole Harbour in the United Kingdom.
• In 2022 we reported a significant fire on a platform in Perenco's Emeraude field offshore Congo-Brazzaville. No one was killed or injured, but the incident nonetheless resulted in oil spills in the surrounding waters.
• In 2020, Hubert Chazarenc was working on a Perenco drilling platform off the coast of Cameroon. He died of a head injury at the age of 34, after falling 13 meters into the sea when a rotten piece of grating gave way under him. French investigative journalists at France2 looking into his death found that there were two additional fatalities on Perenco in only the eight months from May 2020 to January 2021.
• In 2017 Upstream magazine "revealed that the lives of 10 offshore workers were put at risk after they were flown to and left on Perenco's normally unattended Davy 49/30A platform in the UK southern North Sea, unaware that a large gas leak was enveloping part of the facility."
• In December 2016, Tyron Jones, a British man aged 43, suffered fatal injuries after being crushed by a 1,400kg electrical panel on Perenco's Indefatigable 23A facility in the UK sector of the North Sea.
• In 2013, 13 people were killed when a Perenco-chartered Mi-8 helicopter crashed onshore in Peru whilst making a routine flight from Iquitos to Perenco's Block 67 operations.

These are only the publicly known deaths reported in the international media. From the France2 reporting on the tragic death of M. Chazarenc, it is clear that at least two deaths in less than one year in one country had gone largely unnoticed.

Unfortunately, when workers die in remote locations working for private companies, the events often go unreported and unnoticed in the media, especially if the dead are local nationals and where the local regulations are lax.

The pattern at Perenco is truly alarming and we would urge the company to be more open about its accidents and the lessons learnt.

Not so classy

Perenco has "pioneered" the use of non IACS classification societies for its vessels, platforms, and rigs in Africa, working closely with the International Naval Surveys Bureau (INSB) of Athens, rather than the larger and better known, more established players like American Bureau of Shipping, DNV, and Bureau Veritas.

We believe that Perenco is INSB's single largest customer. Perenco managers have told sources that the move to INSB was driven by a desire to increase operational flexibility and avoid the stringent standards applied by the major class societies.

We can't comment on whether this is true, but it fits with our own observations of the company and its operations.

It is not clear who certified the Becuna platform; we would be very interested to know. Gabon has no government-mandated safety inspection regime, so class is the only independent auditor of safety there.

Gabon's shady maritime fleet

Gabon also has a terrible safety record as a flag state and in its domestic marine operations.

You will recall that Gabon has been a prime destination for the flagging of the Dark Fleet, tankers smuggling sanctioned crude, including many formerly Russian-owned vessels that are often without sufficient insurance (or any insurance, for that matter). Gabon's approach to safety, to seafarer protection, and to maritime standards are a disgrace.

In May 2023, the Gabon-flagged Aframax tanker Pablo exploded at anchor off Malaysia, killing three crewmembers. You probably don't recall that the flag state published a comprehensive report into the explosion and its underlying causes and has pressed charges against the mysterious owners of the Marshall Islands-registered company that owned the Dark Fleet vessel suspected of trading sanctioned crude.

You probably don't recall this… BECAUSE IT DID NOT HAPPEN.

The Gabon flag state appears to have done nothing in public to investigate the disaster or to prevent a recurrence. Indeed, in January, Lloyds List reported that Russian state-owned shipping company SovComFlot had placed another 18 oil tankers under the Gabon registry, which is owned by a private company in the UAE.

Michelle Wiese Bockmann calculated that 98 per cent of the Gabon-registered fleet was believed to be smuggling crude oil – quite an achievement for a country run by a military dictator who seized power in a bloodless coup.

Tanker down and ferry down

And it is not just Gabon-flagged tankers that operate with extreme danger to their passengers and crew.

In March 2023, as we reported, the Ro-Pax ferry Esther Miracle sank underway between the Gabonese capital of Libreville and Port Gentil, the centre of the oil and gas business in the country. Thirty-seven people were killed or lost in the disaster.

Now, with an additional six likely dead offshore, we have to ask when the Gabonese government is going to take action to prevent its offshore facilities and vessels from blowing up, sinking, and killing people.

What we ask of Perenco

In February, Perenco appointed Armel Simondin to replace Benoit de la Fouchardiere as CEO of the company. We would urge M. Simondin to take the following measures:

1. Commission and publish a thorough and transparent report into the Gabonese deaths so that Perenco's other operations and the oil and gas industry as a whole can learn from this unnecessary tragedy and prevent similar accidents.
2. Investigate whether cost-cutting, insufficient safety standards, and adopting in-house practices, which are contrary to industry best practice, contributed to the fire and the incident.
3. Ensure that the families of the dead are properly compensated.
4. Publish a full list of Perenco's incidents and accidents in the last decade that involved fatalities or serious injuries or spills, and explain what measures have been taken to prevent recurrence.
5. Open up the company's facilities and critical operations to audit by an IACS class society like DNV, ABS, or BV. Something seems wrong to our eye, and current classification arrangements and company procedures do not seem to be delivering safe, incident-free operations.

Perenco produces over 510,000 barrels of gross production of oil and gas per day. It has the resources to make its sites safe for its staff, and its management should be held accountable for its shameful safety record.

A new CEO brings a chance to change a what appears to be failed and rotten corporate safety culture.

Perenco and Gabon together are a toxic combination. If you are working for Perenco, stand up for safety and look after yourself. The company's record shows that vigilance is needed.

The Perrodo family have made billions, but worker safety appears to be low on their list of priorities.

Further reading

More information on the Dark Fleet and the role of the Gabon Registry as a facilitator of oil smuggling and funding the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine can be read in this Atlantic Council report.

Our background story of the Perrodo family that owns Perenco is here. We wrote that the "Perrodo family history reads like the Dynasty soap opera…"

Disclose Investigate Europe has a series of reports called The Perenco Files on the various other accusations of malfeasance against the company, including claims of excessive gas flaring and pollution in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the use of shell companies to own billions in real estate and private equity assets. Disclose's summary explains the background to the group and its controversial links to a French minister.

Contacts for confidential reporting

If you have information relating to Perenco's safety record or the role of INSB in enforcing safety standards, or information on the Gabon registry and the Dark Fleet, you can reach the author via hieronymousbosch.baird@gmail.com or the editor via editor@bairdmaritime.com. All information will be treated confidentially.