Petroleum exploration occurred heavily off the Atlantic coast after 1968; production began in 1976 involving Chevron, Mobil, Unocal, Royal/Dutch Shell, Agip, TotalFinaElf, Teikoku Oil and the Japan National Oil Company. Recent onshore exploitation near the refinery involves Total, Pan Ocean Energy (UK) and Addax Petroleum (Canada).
The heartland of the Congo also has petroleum, and this is part of the reason for the unfathomable terrorism involving Western enterprises and agents and the concomitant rates of mortality in the interior. Petroleum reserves were discovered (but left dormant) by Chevron in the Equateur rainforest in the late 1970's.
By 1997 this vast concession-known as Cuvette Centrale for the former petit province-was held by Trillion Resources Ltd., established in Vancouver in 1987.
The company is involved in exploration throughout Africa in association with Canadian mining companies such as Nickelodeon Minerals Inc., Oliver Gold Corporation and Skeena Resources Ltd. In DRC its activities have also involved mining in Katanga with DRC parastatal Gecamines. There is no doubt that Trillion and Chevron interests supported certain factions in Congo's wars.
In Eastern DRC, petroleum under Lake Albert is being tapped on the Ugandan side by Canada's Heritage Oil & Gas, Tullow Oil and Hardman Resources, supported by the organized crime syndicates involved with the Uganda "government," which is itself another syndicated crime ring run by the Ugandan military, General James Kazini, and Museveni's half-brother Salim Saleh. Further south near Goma and Bukavu, Lake Kivu is targeted by U.S. companies, working through the current dictatorship in Rwanda, for its massive methane reserves.
"This is an oil country," the new Congo's newly created Oil Minister Lambert Mende was quoted by Reuters to say, "not because of our current small production, but because there is major potential... Quite modestly, we expect nothing less than three billion barrels of reserves, and it's certainly more than that."
Reuters in July 2007 confirmed that onshore reserves remain untapped and largely unexplored in Equateur province in the north as well as under Lake Albert and Lake Tanganyika along the eastern border.
As always, the exploiters try to minimize the awareness of the resources they are targeting. Contrary to the statement by MONUC's German diplomat Albrecht Conze-as the Congolese, Rwandan and Ugandan people know all too well-the "terrorists" are all over Central Africa, even if some of them have never visited the country.
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