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12/13/21, 8:24 PM Oil company accused of drilling in African wildlife reserve, offering jobs for silence

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ENVIRONMENT W I L D L I F E WATC H

Oil company accused of drilling in African


wildlife reserve, offering jobs for silence
Canada-based ReconAfrica appears to have flouted Namibian law, legal experts say.

Canadian oil exploration company ReconAfrica drilled this test well, its second in Namibia,
inside the protected Kapinga Kamwalye Conservancy before obtaining the necessary
permissions.
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

BY JEFFREY BARBEE AND LAUREL NEME

PUBLISHED DECEMBER 13, 2021 • 20 MIN READ

R U N D U , N A M I B I A — Canadian oil and gas exploration company


Reconnaissance Energy Africa has bulldozed land for a test oil well inside a
protected wildlife area in northeastern Namibia, and two local leaders say
they were offered jobs in return for their silence. 

Kapinga Kamwalye Conservancy borders the Okavango River and extends


This is yourmore than
last free 22this
article miles south
month. into the Kalahari Desert. Established in 2018 to

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protect habitat for charismatic animals such as elephants and rare sable

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antelope, the conservancy also attracts tourism and provides jobs for some
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of its 3,700 residents. Villages are interspersed among groves of towering
teak, rosewood, and mopane trees, which offer vital shade. 

But last December, the oil company came.

Today a clearing the size of five football fields scars the Kapinga Kamwalye
refuge, sensitive land bulldozed in January by ReconAfrica for an
exploratory drill site. Pits holding waste from test drilling are filled with
dark liquid. Fields are pocked with the heavy imprint of metal seismic
testing plates. Ripped-up trees lie in blackened heaps alongside wide
tracks through the bush. 

Licenses for oil and gas exploration in Namibia and Botswana


The Canadian petroleum exploration company ReconAfrica believes that the
Kavango Basin holds significant amounts of recoverable oil. The company’s
exploration license covers more than 13,200 square miles near the famed
AFRI
Okavango Delta and is home to some 200,000 people and abundant wildlife,
including the world’s largest remaining elephant herds.

ANGOLA NAMIBIA

Rundu
BWABWATA N.P.

Test well
ENLARGED BELOW Kapinga Kamwalye
Conservancy
MANGETTI
NATIONAL PARK

Elephant
Elephant movement KHAUDUM movement OKAVANGO DELT
N.P. TSODILO HILLS WORLD HERITAGE S
WORLD HERITAGE SITE
excluded from license
Licensed areas for
petroleum prospecting

NAMIBIA
25 mi
B O T S WA N A
25 km

Ma

Test well drilled


inside conservancy
This satellite image from November 13,
2021, shows a ReconAfrica test well inside
Kapinga Kamwalye Conservancy, whose
leaders say the company undertook
drilling without first securing necessary
Kapinga Kamwalye
permissions. Conservancy boundary
ANGOLA

NA MIBIA
SERVANCY

ERVANCY

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INSIDE CONSE
OUTSIDE CONS
Kapinga Kamwalye ReconAfrica
test well
Conservancy LOGIN Renew SUBSCRIBE MENU

Omataku

Test well
ENLARGED 650 feet (198 meters)
AT RIGHT 5 mi
5 km

Christina Shintani, NGM Staff.


Sources: Planet Labs PBC; Green Marble;
Protected Planet; Hydrosheds; NAMCOR;
Department of Mines, Botswana

Since National Geographic began reporting last year on environmental


and community concerns about ReconAfrica’s oil exploration near the
Okavango Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage site, opposition to the project
has grown in Namibia and beyond. 

New evidence, including aerial photographs taken in September 2021,


points to ReconAfrica having drilled in the conservancy without proper
permissions.

In a statement emailed to National Geographic, the company wrote,


“ReconAfrica categorically denies that it engaged in any wrongdoing.” 

“The Company’s commitment to ethics and business conduct are based on


the highest standards of corporate governance, respect, integrity, and
responsibility,” ReconAfrica wrote. The company did not provide answers
to a detailed list of questions emailed by National Geographic.

Meanwhile, a whistleblower who is a global securities expert filed a


complaint on May 5 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC), accusing ReconAfrica of misleading regulators and investors about
its work. The confidential complaint, which is based on public records,
prompted two U.S. members of Congress to call for an investigation by the
Department of Justice and the SEC. (The agencies would not confirm an
investigation into ReconAfrica’s activities.) 

Leonardo DiCaprio
@LeoDiCaprio
#SavetheOkavangoDelta
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Oil drilling upstream of Okavango Delta moves closer to reality


This month, ReconAfrica’s multimillion-dollar drilling rig pierced a
riverbed in elephant habitat some 160 miles from the wildlife-rich …
nationalgeographic.com
9:13 PM · Feb 11, 2021
4.2K Reply Copy link to Tweet
Read 273 replies

Recently, a class action lawsuit was also filed against ReconAfrica


executives and associates, alleging violations of federal securities laws.

Celebrity environmentalists are speaking out. Leonardo DiCaprio, Forest


Whitaker, and Ellen DeGeneres are among those who signed an open letter
written by the environmental nonprofit Re:wild calling for a moratorium
on ReconAfrica’s drilling. Prince Harry, meanwhile, published an opinion
piece in the Washington Post with Namibian scientist and activist
Reinhold Mangundu about threats to the region posed by ReconAfrica’s
operations.

ADVERTISEMENT

ReconAfrica obtained licenses in 2015 and 2020 to explore for oil and gas
across more than 13,200 square miles in the ecologically sensitive,
wildlife-rich Okavango Delta watershed in Namibia and Botswana.
UNESCO recognizes the delta, a 7,000-square-mile oasis, as a natural
landscape with “outstanding value to humanity.” It’s home to endangered
animals, including wild dogs, white-backed vultures, black rhinos, and
Africa’s largest remaining herd of savanna elephants. 

The company’s exploration licenses cover a significant part of the


sprawling Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA),
established by five countries in southern Africa, in part to safeguard the
headwaters of the region’s great rivers, including the Okavango.

ReconAfrica’s Namibia license is valid until January 29, 2023, and the
company has said it will drill multiple wells in 2022. Test drilling so far
has taken place roughly 160 miles upstream of the delta. 
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Critics describe ReconAfrica as adopting an act-first-ask-later approach:


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clearing land and conducting test drilling before securing land-use permits
and local permissions, and using water and disposing of it before receiving
water permits. 

0:16

This aerial view of ReconAfrica’s first test-well site, at the


village of Kawe, shows a pit holding wastewater from drilling
operations. Contrary to standard industry practice in British
Columbia, where the company is based, ReconAfrica has not
lined the pit with an impermeabl... Read More
JAMES JAMU / THE NAMIBIAN

“The precedent of drilling first and asking permission later completely


undermines any [environmental impact assessment] process, the rule of
law, and, obviously, best practices,” said Erica Lyman, a law professor and
director of the Global Law Alliance for Animals and the Environment at
Lewis & Clark Law School, in Portland, Oregon.

ReconAfrica spokesperson Claire Preece told National Geographic in


October 2020 that the company would “ensure that there is no
environmental impact from these wells,” adding that “ReconAfrica follows
Namibian regulations and policies as well as international best practices.”

Threatened lifeline
ReconAfrica’s drilling project comes as other threats are endangering the
region’s vital ecosystem. Scant rainfall has contributed to one of the lowest
levels of annual water inflows in the Okavango Delta ever recorded by
Botswana’s Department of Water Affairs. 

Water use by commercial farming in Namibia and Angola, as well as


pollution and climate change, threatens the waters that nurture “much of
This is yourthe
last life, production,
free article and
this month. economy” of the region, three scientists wrote in a
recent paper in Conservation Namibia. The situation is so grave that a
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deeper study of the impacts on the entire water basin is urgently needed,
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they said. “The more broken the river, the harder it is to find fault or to fix,
and the easier it is to accept further breakages.” 

Botswana’s Moremi Game Reserve, on the eastern side of the


Okavango Delta, is home to a plethora of wildlife, including
hippos, elephants, lions, giraffes, and endangered African
wild dogs. ReconAfrica’s exploration licenses in Namibia and
Botswana allow it to drill in... Read More
P H OTO G R A P H BY C O RY R I C H A R D S , N AT G E O
IMAGE COLLECTION

The Okavango Delta’s headwaters rise in central Angola, pass along the
edge of ReconAfrica’s lease area in northeastern Namibia, and cross into
Botswana, where they fan out into the wetlands. The entire watershed
doesn’t have the same protections as the delta itself, largely because the
three countries have conflicting national goals.

Surina Esterhuyse, a geohydrologist with the University of the Free State,


in Bloemfontein, South Africa, said that if ReconAfrica were to discover
commercially exploitable oil, getting it out of the ground could require
large quantities of that increasingly scarce water. Pollution from oil and
gas drilling in Namibia and Botswana, she added, could foul the Okavango
River and could accumulate in the Okavango Delta, which has no outlet to
the sea.

The company says it has established a buffer zone around the river to
protect it. “ReconAfrica is implementing the most advanced technologies
and systems available in our exploratory drilling operations to ensure all
This is yourwater,
last freeabove andmonth.
article this below ground, is protected,” according to a company fact
Subscribe sheet on water management published in September.

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Even during exploratory drilling, groundwater pollution is a concern, as


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National Geographic first reported in March. ReconAfrica has not lined its
waste pits with an impermeable plastic barrier to prevent chemicals from
seeping into the ground, contrary to standard industry practice in British
Columbia, where ReconAfrica is based. 

The company says its pits are lined with a layer of bentonite clay, which
swells when wet to create a barrier, according to its fact sheet on drilling
fluids. Aerial photographs taken by a journalist in September 2021 show
erosion along the waste pits’ sides.

In January ReconAfrica began construction of its first test well, at Kawe,


without the required water permits, according to Namibia’s minister of
agriculture, water, and land reform, Calle Schlettwein. The ministry did
not respond to National Geographic’s queries, but in a December 13 story
in The Namibian, Schlettwein told the newspaper that the company was
not supposed to drill without the permits. “They did it illegally,” he said.
“We reiterated that the rule is they should not drill for water without any
permit. We threatened not to issue a permit anymore if they carried on like
that.” 

Six months after drilling began at the first site and roughly a month after
drilling began at the second—about eight miles northeast, in Kapinga
Kamwalye Conservancy—ReconAfrica announced in a June 24 press
release that it had received “all water well regulatory approvals for drilling
operations.” The company did not specify what activities were covered by
those approvals, nor did officials provide copies of the permits when asked.
Schlettwein told The Namibian there had been challenges coordinating
among the ministries and that ReconAfrica thought its exploration permit
from the Ministry of Mines and Energy included drilling boreholes for
water.

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Water from the Okavango River irrigates fields in Namibia’s


narrow Caprivi Strip. According to geohydrologist Surina
Esterhuyse, pollution from oil and gas drilling in Namibia and
Botswana could foul the Okavango River and could
accumulate in the Okavango Delta, which... Read More
P H OTO G R A P H BY C O RY R I C H A R D S , N AT G E O
IMAGE COLLECTION

The controversy heats up


Reinhold Mangundu, the Namibian activist and scientist who recently co-
authored an opinion piece with Prince Harry protesting the drilling, said in
an interview that “politicians are starting to ask the right questions”—
questions shaped by input from Indigenous people, human rights activists,
international experts, and scientists. He credits a groundswell of concern—
driven by local people and amplified by the international community and
Namibian and U.S. lawmakers—with “helping to uncover the flawed
processes that led to this project being approved.” 

Anti-drilling grassroots and Indigenous organizations have protested in


Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, during the past year. In public hearings
since June, Namibian lawmakers have expressed concerns about
inadequate oversight by the environment and water ministries. And the
Namibian High Court is hearing the case of a farmer who alleges that
ReconAfrica illegally cleared his land for a test well. 

The company says it had “documented permission” from the local


traditional leader to clear the land.

The New York-based Rosen Law Firm, known for its work on investor
This is yourrights,
last freefiled
articleathis
class action
month. lawsuit against 11 ReconAfrica executives and
Subscribe associates, alleging “violation of the federal securities laws.” The lawsuit

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names ReconAfrica board chairman James Jay Park, CEO Scot Evans, L O G I N Renew SUBSCRIBE MENU
Namibian environmental assessor Sindila Mwiya, and three ReconAfrica
spokespeople, among others. It states that company representatives “had a
duty to disseminate accurate and truthful information” and to correct
“materially false or misleading” statements.

The litigation attempts to hold ReconAfrica accountable for alleged


misrepresentations that have the potential to “cost investors their life
savings,” and it highlights how the company’s actions may be putting the
region’s communities, the environment, and wildlife at risk, said Lyman, of
Lewis & Clark Law School.  

NewA family collects water from the Okavango River in


northeastern Namibia. Their farm in the Kavango-Zambezi
Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) lies within
ReconAfrica’s license area. KAZA was created in part to help
protect the watershed of the Okavango River, a vi...
Read More
P H OTO G R A P H BY J E F F B A R B E E , N AT I O N A L
GEOGRAPHIC

In a press release on October 28, ReconAfrica said it “will undertake


vigorous action to defend itself against any such claims.” 

In Canada, the Center for International Environmental Law and other


groups filed a request on September 16 with the TSX Venture Exchange,
where the stock is listed, to investigate possible “misrepresentations” in
This is yourthe
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month. disclosures that may have misled investors and
Subscribe regulators.

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In Germany, ReconAfrica also lists its securities on the Frankfurt StockL O G I N Renew SUBSCRIBE MENU
Exchange, and a spokesperson at the financial regulatory agency BaFin
confirmed to National Geographic in an email that the agency is
“analyzing” the company’s trading activities.

The view from Kapinga Kamwalye Conservancy 


On a broiling Sunday afternoon in September, a National Geographic
reporter drove from the village of Shitemo, on the Okavango River, to
Kapinga Kamwalye Conservancy to investigate ReconAfrica’s activities. 

Namibia’s community wildlife conservancies make up more than 20


percent of the country’s land and are considered examples of how wildlife
conservation can promote rural development and protect natural
resources.

ReconAfrica’s second test drilling site, near Mbambi, is inside the


conservancy.

Originally, according to the company’s own environmental assessment, the


drill site was to be outside the protected area, but it was moved inside,
about three miles to the northeast. (The company did not answer questions
about why the site was moved.) 

In the regional capital of Rundu, under a huge kigelia, or “sausage tree,”


near the Okavango River, conservancy leader Thomas Muronga raised his
soft voice to be heard over the high-pitched kee-kee-kee of Meyer’s parrots
feasting on the blossoms above. ReconAfrica’s drill site, he asserted, was
inside his community’s conservancy “illegally.”

In June, ReconAfrica CEO Evans said in a press release that the company
intended to “exceed regulatory compliance.” But in the half year since,
ReconAfrica still has not gotten approval from the Kavango East
Communal Land Board, a group of local representatives empowered by
Namibia’s Communal Land Reform Act to be the ultimate arbiter of land
rights in the area.

The company didn’t submit its application to the land board until June 28,
nearly six months after the land was cleared and drilling began, according
to Muronga, who also sits on the board. The board’s chairman, Bernardino
Mbumba, confirmed during a parliamentary hearing in Windhoek on
November 23 that the company’s application is still pending—even though
ReconAfrica began bulldozing the land for its oil well in January 2021.

In any case, before a communal land board can decide on an application, a


company needs to secure written authorization from the Ministry of
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Agriculture, Water and Land Reform; the local traditional authority; and,
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if the land is in a conservancy, the conservancy’s leadership, accordingLto


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the act. Even then, a communal land board can’t approve a project if it’s
deemed to undermine a conservancy’s goals as laid out in five-year
management plans that are filed with the government. 

Kapinga Kamwalye Conservancy was set up “for the management of


wildlife,” not for oil drilling, Muronga said.

0:17

Savanna elephants, such as these in northeastern Namibia,


migrate across part of the 13,200-square-mile territory
licensed to ReconAfrica. Biologists say oil exploitation in this
sensitive habitat could affect these and other animals.
ReconAfrica says it’s using the most e... Read More
JAMES JAMU / THE NAMIBIAN

It’s unclear if ReconAfrica has permission from the ministry to use the
land inside the conservancy (the ministry did not respond to requests for
comment), but even so, ministry approval would be only the first move of a
multistep process.

Kapinga Kamwalye Conservancy’s chairperson, Muronga, said the reserve


has not given its permission for drilling and the company never consulted
with the conservancy’s management in advance about its drilling plans. 

“Suddenly we found that they were within our area,” he said. “They were
clearing with bulldozers.”

ReconAfrica says it has a letter of approval to use the land from the
traditional authority, a local leader empowered by customary law. But
according to the Communal Land Reform Act, such a letter is meaningless
without the communal land board’s approval as well.

This is yourAt
lastthe
freeNovember 23 parliamentary
article this month. hearing, Mbumba said ReconAfrica
Subscribe had worked for nine months at its first drill site, in Kawe, without approval

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of the Kavango East Communal Land Board, which manages all the land
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on which the company is drilling.

Despite this, the land board neither fined the company nor stopped it from
drilling. “On that one, we failed,” Mbumba acknowledged, saying the board
was preoccupied. 

In September, the communal land board retroactively approved the first


drill site, but ReconAfrica’s application for use of the second drill site,
inside the conservancy, is still pending. 

Job offers
Max Muyemburuko is chairperson of Kavango East and West Regional
Conservancy and Community Forest Association, which oversees all
conservancies in the region. He’s also chairman of Muduva Nyangana
Conservancy, within ReconAfrica’s license area.  

He and Muronga have been outspoken about ReconAfrica’s actions during


the past year. In May, Muyemburuko told National Geographic that he
believed his life was in danger for expressing concerns about the
company’s oil exploration activities and treatment of local people.

Yet both men said in September that they’d received unsolicited offers to
work for ReconAfrica to monitor wildlife, which they interpreted as
attempted bribes. 

They said ReconAfrica’s lawyer, Shakwa Nyambe, and a ReconAfrica


contractor, Francois Jahs, asked to meet them on May 28 at Kavango River
Lodge, in Rundu. Muronga provided National Geographic with an email
from Jahs sent two days before, outlining a wildlife-monitoring plan Jahs
said he wanted to talk about.  

At the meeting, according to Muyemburuko, the two company


representatives told them that “whatever assistance that we need, we can
just tell them, and they can come up with some solutions.” Muyemburuko
interpreted this as an incentive to stop him from criticizing the project. 

Muronga noted that Nyambe and Jahs said they’d heard Muronga and
Muyemburuko speaking out against the company in the media and
understood they “are not happy.”

He said Jahs told him that “if we want to be helped,” they would “take us to
work for the company.”

Nyambe encouraged them to accept the job offers, Muyemburuko said,


This is yourbecause the conservancy’s
last free article this month. “allowance is very small,” and “it cannot take
Subscribe you anywhere.” 

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“I did not see [the offers] as legal,” said Muyemburuko, who believes they
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“were made to keep us quiet.”

“Oh yes, that is a bribe,” Muronga agreed. "They wanted to silence us.”

Nyambe denied in an email that he had offered jobs to either


Muyemburuko or Muronga, and added: “In my capacity as legal
practitioner I have never received any instructions from ReconAfrica to
conduct recruitment of persons on behalf of my client.” Jahs did not
respond to requests for comment; nor did ReconAfrica, which pointed
National Geographic to its anti-bribery policy. 

The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it illegal for any company
whose securities are listed in the United States, including ReconAfrica, to
offer anything of value to a foreign official to evade regulations.
Christopher Bruno, a former U.S. federal prosecutor and former senior
counsel with the SEC, said that what the conservancy leaders have
described could violate the act, particularly because the company is
seeking approval of land permits retroactively. 

Because Muronga is a member of the communal land board, which has the
ultimate authority to approve or deny leasehold over land that ReconAfrica
already has developed, the job offer could be intended as a quid pro quo,
Bruno said. “Giving jobs is like giving shares to people in the company,” he
said.

ReconAfrica came “with a suitcase of promises,” Mangundu said, but all


the “processes they’ve been part of—they’ve been flawed.” 

A spokesperson for the company countered in the statement to National


Geographic that “ReconAfrica is exploring in Namibia and Botswana at the
invitation of the national governments. Ultimately, the people of Namibia
and Botswana, through their traditional authorities, elected governments
and regulatory agencies, will determine how they will manage their natural
resources.”

“We are fighting with a big elephant,” Muronga said. “The people who are
on top, giving out authorizations, they will be fine because they have
money.” But “at the end of the day, whatever impacts that the project will
have, it is going to be on us, who are poor.”

Wildlife Watch is an investigative reporting project between National


Geographic Society and National Geographic Partners focusing on wildlife
crime and exploitation. Read more Wildlife Watch stories here, and learn more
about
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