Earlier in the month, we reported on the exit of SBM Offshore from Equatorial Guinea. The floating production giant has sold its equity interest in the lease and operating entities of the FPSO Aseng to GE Petrol, the national oil company of Equatorial Guinea.
The sale of the Aseng unit, which is working on Chevron’s field in the country, follows the departure of SBM’s customer ExxonMobil from Equatorial Guinea through its disposal of Zafiro field and Block B, and the scrapping of the Zafiro Producer FPSO.
Zafiro field has now transitioned to the management of troubled British facilities management company Petrofac on behalf of GE Petrol.
It’s not just SBM that is leaving Equatorial Guinea, however. Finally, two of its engineers are also free to go home after being released from over two years of unlawful detention there.
In 2023, we covered the awful story of South African citizens Peter Huxham and Frederic Potgeiter, who were working for SBM when they were unjustly convicted to 12 years in prison each, and fined US$7.8 million apiece after being implausibly accused of trying to smuggle cocaine out of the country, back to South Africa.
They were arrested on February 9, 2023, after they signed off from two different floating production facilities and the police snatched them in their hotel before they flew home. The charges appeared ludicrous in the circumstances.
The prosecution came following a bust up between the government of Equatorial Guinea and their home government in South Africa, after courts in Cape Town found against Equatorial Guinea's Vice President, Teodoro “Teddy” Nguema Obiang, in a damages case against another South African businessman, who had been detained in squalid conditions for over a year in Malabo, and obtained a court order to arrest Teddy’s yacht, Blue Shadow.
Teddy also happens to be the son of the President of Equatorial Guinea and has been convicted of money laundering and of stealing US$150 million of state funds whilst living the high life in Europe (here). The US Government has confiscated his villa in California, the Swiss government seized his collection of Bugatti supercars in Geneva, and the French have also prosecuted him.
In July 2024, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that the imprisonment of Mr Huxham and Mr Potgeiter was arbitrary, unlawful, and in breach of multiple international human rights obligations. The UN also, at the time, called for their immediate release.
On June 4, 2025, Equatorial Guinea was one of the countries targeted in American President Donald Trump’s Executive Order that fully restricted the entry of all its citizens into the USA due to alleged national security and public safety concerns. This may have reminded the government in Malabo that perhaps having some friends in Africa might be useful.
Finally, this weekend, good news. Frik Potgieter and Peter Huxham were released under a pardon from the Equatorial Guinean president and returned safely home on South African soil on Saturday after 28 months of imprisonment.
Their families expressed their deepest appreciation to everyone who worked tirelessly behind the scenes for their release, including their employer SBM Offshore, the South African and UK Governments, international diplomatic partners, parliamentarians, legal teams, Hostage International and other civil society organisations, and the media.
The families also thanked the former Minister of International Relations, Naledi Pandor, and the current Minister, Ronald Lamola, who visited Equatorial Guinea as envoys for the President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa.
It is wonderful that the two men are now free, but their imprisonment is a reminder that seafarers and offshore workers can be subject to arbitrary imprisonment, false charges and even torture on the whims of governments and geopolitics.
The criminalisation of seafarers should be a concern for all in the industry and the International Maritime Organisation should be more robust in its defence of the rights of seafarers.
We saw the problems of arbitrary detention in Nigeria with the crew of the tankers Heroic Idun and the San Padre Pio before it.
Dictatorships can be capricious and brutal to foreigners as much as to their own people, and the international nature of the offshore industry means that offshore crew need to be alert to the risks of travelling to and working in countries where there is no rule of law, no independent judiciary and no respect for human rights.
It's not just Equatorial Guinea that has been accused of having no respect for human rights, however.
In March 2024, we reported the horrific explosion on Perenco’s Becuna platform off Gabon in which six offshore workers were killed, five Gabonese and the French company man on the facility, Thomas Gares. The explosion followed a blow out during workover operations.
We highlighted how this fatal accident was just one in a long line of deaths, incidents, fires and pollution events across Perenco’s worldwide operations over many years.
We requested that the company should publish a full and transparent investigation into the Becuna explosion, and that compensation should be paid to the families of the victims. Unfortunately, no transparent and public report was issued by Perenco, not to our knowledge, anyway, and the value of the compensation paid appears to be disputed.
After we published the initial article, four readers wrote in with their own accounts of lax safety standards and even outright dangerous operations they had witnessed in Perenco fields in the North Sea and in Africa. Nobody wrote in to defend Perenco.
We strongly advised François Perrodo, the chairman of Perenco, to set aside his sports car racing and collection of Maclaren supercars and focus on making the company a safe place to work all around the world.
Perenco has over 500,000 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.
So, what has happened since the horrific explosion on Becuna?
According to the non-governmental organisation Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in Washington, what came next was a cover-up, the intimidation of witnesses and bribery by Perenco.
The EIA (not to be confused with other organisations with similar acronyms) has produced a report into the Becuna tragedy entitled Death Behind Closed Doors and a short video that reiterates those claims. The report apparently took three years to produce and involved fifty hours of witness interviews.
There’s a lot that will not surprise Baird Maritime readers, especially those who have worked with or for Perenco. The latter company uses tax havens and offshore jurisdictions to hold the ownership of its oilfields – not exactly a revelation.
The, “imperative to prioritise production at all costs, in conjunction with the company’s reliance on ageing and apparently minimally maintained assets, has led to a series of environmental and social catastrophes.” This is widely known and has been covered, not least here in this column.
“EIA undercover investigators learned from multiple Perenco Group employees, many oil leaks and the accompanying pollution have not been reported in the media.”
This is not a surprise, given how many oil leaks across multiple jurisdictions have been covered. As Perenco is a private company controlled and financed by the billionaire Perrodo family, it is clear that it really didn’t give a damn about pollution in remote and obscure production locations, because it is not answerable to public investors or lenders.
The EIA’s detailed analysis of the Becuna blow-out is certainly worth reading. Several witnesses reported to the NGO that pressure to maintain production at all times, to “pump, pump, pump” as one put it, led to safety being fatally compromised, and warning signs ignored. Surprise!
The EIA’s report is even more critical of Perenco’s response to the aftermath of the explosion, when one source told the NGO said that human remains from the blast were washed into the sea with a high-pressure washer. Another said that some of the victims were buried in unmarked graves.
The report maintains that the families of the five Gabonese killed in the blast have still not received compensation. Perenco denies this, and says that a Gabonese Government tribunal has arranged for compensation to 22 families and that all the victims were compensated except for one family who rejected the offer.
If the company had been more proactive in highlighting what it had done to help the victims, the public debate between the company and its NGO critic on this issue could have been avoided.
Additionally, the EIA cited sources who claim that the company paid bribes to a named Gabonese official to prevent its shore-based management being detained when the then-Gabonese Prosecutor General, Pierre Johsan Apérano Essongué, arrested three senior Perenco officials in Gabon: Adrien Broche, the General Manager; Nestor Aworet, the Deputy General Manager; and Augustin de la Passe, who was at the time reported as being the Workover Director, as per the EIA.
Perenco also worked to ensure that the findings of the investigation into the disaster were not communicated to the Gabonese President, the EIA claimed.
We quote the report directly and in full, as follows:
“However, despite being held on suspicion of involuntary homicide, all three were released shortly after, apparently as a result of political intervention by Perenco Group officials, and linked to bribes paid to the Prosecutor General, Édith Christiane Mvou Loubamono Epse Mbangangoye:
Source: "What happened was that that day, they paid out 40 million Francs CFA [now worth around US$70,000]… that fell into the hands of the deputy prosecutor who took over the case. She was the one who coordinated the release of the deputy country manager, the country manager, and the workover director [of Perenco], who had been held by the intelligence service, from noon until 11 pm. They were going to spend the night there. So, she called the director saying that they could be released and the interrogation would continue the next day. The prosecutor in charge of the case, when he called the director the next morning to learn what happened, was very unhappy when they told him that his colleague had given the order to release them, even though she wasn’t in charge of the case…"
EIA: "So, even though it wasn’t her case, she intervened, very likely due to the [alleged] bribe she had received?"
Source: "Of course, that’s exactly it."
EIA: "And who did the [alleged] bribe come from?"
Source: “From Perenco.”
"The tensions between the Prosecutor General who released the Perenco Group officials and the Public Prosecutor at the Court of First Instance of Port-Gentil who had arrested them made headlines in Gabon, several weeks after the Becuna platform accident.
"In May, 2024, Pierre Johsan Apérano Essongué was suspended from his role as Public Prosecutor by his superior, the Prosecutor General of the Republic, Edith Christiane Mvou Loubamono, for misconduct and insubordination related to the release of the Perenco Group employees.
"The charge of insubordination relating to the Becuna platform accident was initially brought before the Minister of Justice, who referred the case to the High Council of the Judiciary for a decision while instructing the courts to continue their investigation into the accident.”
The EIA suggests that Perenco has behaved in a manner that is secretive, unaccountable and, allegedly, corrupt. This is disappointing, if true, and it raises questions of when the next disaster will occur offshore unless the cycle of low standards and under-investment in maintenance can be turned around.
We hoped that the Becuna explosion would be the catalyst for the company to change, to improve its operational standards, to increase the maintenance of its facilities and to make its facilities safe for those who work there, and for the environment.
This is apparently not the case. Perenco’s response to the EIA report is very telling, however.
Last week we looked at the disastrous response to criticism from the CEO of Cadeler, whose tin-eared efforts to silence those who accused him of bullying and a harsh management style only served to magnify the allegations.
A similar spat over harsh management has erupted at Danish freight forwarder and logistics company DSV, with 14 staff and former staff speaking out against the CEO. In both cases, a failure to address the underlying concerns has only served to increase the controversy. So too at Perenco.
Perenco has published what it believes is a robust rebuttal of the EIA report on its website.
Unfortunately, because Perenco has failed to publish an independent and authoritative investigation into the events at Becuna, its response comes across as defensive. It says the lighting supplier on the platform was to blame for the explosion and that it has filed a criminal complaint against them, and it disputes the causation of the explosion postulated by the EIA in its report.
However, by failing to be open and transparent in detailing the causes of the explosion and the fatalities in the 15 months since the tragedy, Perenco has left the field open to the EIA to produce its own report, and Perenco can only react.
Perenco begins by shooting the messenger squarely between the eyes:
"The desire to smear the Perenco Group and do it harm, and a complete disregard for the facts of the matter, is evident upon reading EIA's letter of 12 May 2025. It is plainly apparent on (almost) every page of the report. This statement will therefore not respond point-by-point to the collection of approximations, errors and falsehoods that characterize the Report.
"That said, the group cannot remain silent in the face of the revolting manipulation of the accident that occurred on the Becuna platform operated by Perenco Oil and Gas Gabon ('POGG') on 20 March 2024 (the 'accident'). Six people have lost their lives, yet over the eleven or more pages focused on the accident, misinformation and slander achieve new heights.
"This statement and the corrections below are not intended to be exhaustive – and no doubt this will be used as a pretext for yet more misinformation and slander – but simply to re-establish some accessible truths. These should enable a reasonably attentive reader to consider the report for what it is: a propaganda tool with no ambition to tell the truth.
"Generally speaking, any fact or allegation in the report that is not explicitly confirmed in this press release is denied.”
One would have thought there was a genuine public interest requirement to investigate an incident that killed six, rather than just the desire to inflict reputational harm on the company. The blow-out and the deaths have already done more reputational harm than the EIA could ever do to Perenco, in our opinion.
Readers should review the EIA report, then read the Perenco rebuttal and take especial notice of the company’s rebuttals, and reach their own conclusions. Perenco is clear in its position:
“We strongly dispute these serious, obviously unproven allegations. From the moment the accident occurred, POGG has fully cooperated with the Gabonese authorities to shed light on the circumstances of the accident.
"At no point in time did POGG attempt to obstruct the Gabonese authorities' investigation process in any way. No bribe was paid to Prosecutor Mvou Loubamono.”
The whole sorry situation could have been avoided if Perenco had adopted higher safety standards on the platform and in its workover operations and had then been open and transparent about what had happened. These deaths were needless and avoidable.
Those reading the EIA report may find it sensational, but it appears to be based on the testimony of people working for Perenco and on the platform at the time of the disaster.
By failing to publish its own definitive investigation report to the public, and by demonstrably failing to show remorse or to hold any of its senior leadership accountable, Perenco has failed to control the narrative on the accident. Its own response to the report completely fails to address the systemic causes as to how and why this tragedy occurred.
Blaming the lighting supplier for the blast does not explain why there was a gas leak then a gush of oil from the well all over the platform, and arguing the point on whether or not previous well kicks were serious implies that they definitely happened.
Let’s be clear; the EIA is not responsible for the deaths of the six men on the platform, which is the tragedy at hand. Perenco was responsible for the blow-out and the explosion. However, Perenco’s response makes out that the EIA’s report is worse than the accident that left six dead, others injured, and three of its managers briefly in prison in Gabon.
We feel that more remorse, more accountability and more humility would be best from Perenco. Responding to a sensationalist report with frenzied denunciations and manic legal denials seems to ignore the tragedy of the deaths.
If the company had a blameless safety record before Becuna, many in the industry would perhaps have given it the benefit of the doubt. But it didn’t, and many won’t.
What’s revolting is not that an NGO has produced a report into the Becuna tragedy, but that six people died in a completely preventable accident working for a company with a terrible safety record, and that the company has still not produced a detailed response on how such an accident will be prevented again across its other operations and what lessons it has learnt.
Rather than spending thousands on legal fees and carefully worded statements about the cause of the explosion, disputing the details of a third-party report, Perenco should be investing in higher safety standards, adopting the standards of the International Association of Classification Societies across all its production locations, and making sure that every operation it performs is safe.
This is a company that produces half a million barrels of oil a day and is owned by a family with a net worth of around US$10 billion. It can and should do better.
We again appeal to Perenco to do the right thing, to raise its standards and to be completely transparent in its incident reporting. It shouldn’t take a report from a pressure group like the EIA to hold Perenco accountable, and such an incident should never happen again.
Background reading
Our initial report into the Becuna incident is here, the follow-up from readers is covered here.
If you have information relating to Perenco's safety you can reach the author via hieronymousbosch.baird@gmail.com or the editor via editor@bairdmaritime.com. All information will be treated confidentially.