Kinshasa, June 22nd of 2022.

The Congolese President, Félix Tshisekedi, along with the Minister of Hydrocarbons, has announced today that it will begin a massive round of surveys in the DRC to begin finding new oil reserves, which are rumored to be plentiful all over the nation and whose supply can provide unparalleled growth in the history of the nation.

The Data

According to Privacy Shield, the DRC has proven reserves of 180 million barrels of crude oil, with estimates of total petroleum reserves which exceed 5 billion barrels., while our impoverished nation only produces a total of 25,000 barrels per day through French multinational Perenco. We are lacking a drive to produce and explore our oil reserves, and develop our nation accordingly.

Referencing an article published in ‘The Extractive Industries and Society’, Vol 6, Issue 2, of Apr 2019, pages 542-551, “The political economy of oil in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): Corruption and regime control”, it seems that our oil reserves are even bigger than Privacy Shield has estimated, the paper, and I quote, refers to a potential petroleum reserve of beyond 20,000,000,000 billion barrels. This would mean, potentially, that the Congolese nation would be second only to Nigeria in oil production and reserves.

These reserves are further encouraged to be accurate by the publishing of an article by African Energy Chamber, which also comments on the existence of 20 bn barrels of oil reserves in the Congolese nation.

Those reserves are located on three key locations in the DRC, the Central Basin, where COMICO and HRT announced an estimated potential of 7.3-13 billion barrels (COMICO, 2008, p. 3), Damien Delvaux has urged care on exploring these reserves since they are still theoretical. Other than the Central Basin, another region is Lake Albert, where Uganda declared finding 3.5 bn barrels (Reuters, 2012). This geology is mirrored on the Congolese side of Lake Albert, but the only declaration by Caprikat and Foxwhelp, of 3 billion barrels in two blocks, has not been fully justified with concrete research findings.

Finally, to conclude, the third region is Lake Tanganyika, where in March of 2010, the Minister of Hydrocarbons announced to the African Petroleum Conference (CAPE), a potential of 8 billion barrels in the Lake Tanganyika basin (Misser, 2013, p. 160). Along with that, it seems that recent studies have pointed out that the DRC may hold as many as 30 bn cubic meters of methane and natural gas in the three major petroleum deposits. Lake Kivu seems to have 60 bn cubic meters of dissolved methane in its waters, and the lake generates 250,000 cubic meters of methane annually.

The discovery of these oil reserves could theoretically spur massive growth for the DRC, and it would be completely beneficial for the Congolese aspirations; Félix Tshisekedi has been under the sights of Moïse Katumbi, who has recently said that he hopes that the President will put pressure on the Minister and “curb the excesses of the patronage disease”, because, according to Katumbi, “the patronage system will completely curb our development, and bring about further corruption and severe abuses to our national fabric.”

The Government Announcement

The Congolese government has launched a press release to talk about the potential oil in the DRC and how this can benefit the national economy and provide hundreds of jobs to the population, all the while bolstering our resources and providing a more available revenue for us to develop plenty of regions, including the Eastern Congo region.

The President of the nation has sat down with his ministers, especially the Minister of Hydrocarbon to his right, and the Minister of Foreign Commerce to his left, and replied to dozens of questions by the media; many of the question points were pointed towards cronyism and in general, a lot of pressure was dished out to the Congolese president, who was trying his best to alleviate that pressure by giving indirect replies or pledging to pay profound attention to cronyism and impede the constant corruption inside the DRC’s parastatal.

Alongside that, Félix has pledged to maintain the DRC as an international partner, and will contact American, Chinese and Russian enterprises to help with the survey and to provide good technical information that can be used reliably by our companies. The President is going to write letters and to personally meet with these investors and entrepreneurs to ensure that they are welcomed with open arms in the DRC.