Amazon Basin: Credit Agricole Is Getting Rich From the Dirty Gas Business in Peru

The Credit Agricole group holds €240 million in Repsol, a multinational that produces gas in Peru’s Amazon region, making significant gains, Disclose can reveal in partnership with Radio France International, France 24 and the Pulitzer Center. Our investigation shows that the gas company is causing widespread damage to the environment and the health of the local population.

Scorched land, lone polar bears, wind turbines spinning above lush meadows and a voice-over warning that “the countdown has begun”: these are not stills from Extinction Rebellion’s latest campaign but from videos produced by Credit Agricole. In a PR campaign that is supposed to green up its image, the third largest European bank pledges to “put pressure” on its customers to “preserve the future of our planet”. But that is just a facade: the bank with assets worth €2.4bn has a long way to go, a fact it cannot ignore as it has been frantically buying oil and gas shares and bonds in multinationals for which the future of the planet does not seem to be a priority.  

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These financial operations, which go unmentioned in Credit Agricole’s promotional video clips, go through a little-known asset management company that is highly strategic for the group: its investment subsidiary, Amundi, whose mission is to get a return on the savings of private individuals and on the capital of state and private companies. By conducting a thorough analysis of the French group’s investments, Disclose, with France 24, Radio France International (RFI) and the support of the Pulitzer Center, has found out that in August 2024, its subsidiary, Amundi, had €238m worth of shares and bonds in Spanish company Repsol. Credit Agricole has made €10.8m per year from this windfall. We also ascertained that another French bank, Banque Populaire Caisse d’Epargne (BPCE), raised nearly $1bn last September as part of a fundraising operation on Repsol’s behalf. The multinational, which specialises in oil and gas prospection and production, has a strong presence in Latin America, including in Peru, where it has exploited since 2006 a huge gas field in the southeast of the country, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. 

Disclose travelled to Peru in a bid to find out what the French group’s investments in the Spanish firm actually imply on the ground. On the banks of the Urubamba river, in the operational area where more than 5,000 hectares of trees have disappeared, according to a census by NGO Global Forest Watch, Repsol’s presence is everywhere to be felt. The French banking group makes a handsome profit from this extremely polluting gas drilling. 

You need to prick up your ears to catch the humming sound, a low frequency like the beating of a giant dragonfly’s wings, which contrasts with birdsong and the machete blows of Walter Dalguerre, our guide in the Peruvian jungle along the Urubamba river for the past two hours. On 4 October, as we approached the Mipaya gas site, in the midst of Peru’s Amazon rainforest, the whirr became increasingly noticeable. “It is the noise of the flare that is used to burn gas,” Dalguerre commented as he waded across the many waterways you need to cross in order to reach the site from the village of Kirigueti, our starting point. Dalguerre, a fit man in his fifties with a weather-beaten face, should know: he is the chief of Kirigueti, across from Mipaya. 

The site is one of some 30 drill holes with links to a huge gas field called Camisea. The field stretches over 1,700 square kilometres in the jungle, in the Lower Urubamba Basin, and includes three plots held by oil and gas industry heavyweights: Argentina’s Pluspetrol,  US company Hunt Oil and Repsol, which has a 10% stake in Mipaya and the operational majority in other drill holes in the local industry.

Since Walter Dalguerre became the chief of the neighbouring village, he has documented the pollution caused by industrial activity around the gas well. Discarded plastic sheeting, waste water discharge pipework, etc.: Dalguerre takes pictures of it all, apart from the toxic gas, invisible to the naked eye, spewed out by the stack used to burn in the open air gas that is deemed to be superfluous. He says that the Mipaya stack operates on a regular basis, which could have serious consequences for the local fauna and flora but also for the health of the thousands of people who live within a radius of several kilometres. “Impacts associated with exposure to air pollutants emitted by gas flaring are heart attacks, respiratory diseases, asthma, hospitalizations,” says Jonathan Buonocore, an Assistant Professor at the Boston University School of Public Health and an expert on the issue. 

Repsol did not respond to our requests for comment. Argentina’s Pluspetrol, which holds most of the drill holes in Mipaya, was more forthcoming, writing that gas flaring “cannot be considered a threat to public health,” especially, it adds, given that it is “taking place in remote areas, under supervision and in accordance with technical and environmental standards”. 

In Peru, proponents of gas flaring such as Repsol need to get a green light from the Ministry of Energy and Mines before they are allowed to operate. The problem is that public authorities in Peru are quite complacent when it comes to nature preservation and public health. We have worked out on the basis of official documents that since 2022 the authorities have approved the emission of more than 72,000 tonnes of CO2 in the three gas exploitation sites in the area. These permits apply to carbon dioxide emitted by gas flaring alone, which means that gas transport and methane leaks at all stages of the production chain are not being taken into account. Why are things so easy for industrialists? Because the Camisea fields supply 40% of the country’s electricity: they have brought the country €15bn in taxes over 20 years. And there is more to come: the authorities are expected to authorise in the near future the construction of huge gas pipelines to transport the gas produced by Repsol and its partners to other areas in southern Peru.

Nuevo Mundo in the grip

Disclose, France 24 and RFI sent a series of questions to Credit Agricole about the reasons why the group is maintaining links to Repsol through its investment subsidiary although the Spanish multinational has been extracting gas in Peru’s Amazon rainforest since 2006. They answered: “At Credit Agricole we chose at the end of 2023 to speed up our green transition plan and focus our funding on sustainable and low-carbon energy projects to accelerate their deployment. (…) As a result, Credit Agricole has been looking into all sustainable energy projects, including those in the oil and gas industry sector”. They did not provide any details, however, of the €238m invested in Repsol through their subsidiary, Amundi. Yet these very investments enable Credit Agricole to make a profit from the fact that Peru’s Amazon rainforest is in the grip of fossil fuel.

To assess the scope of this grip, we travelled to the village of Nuevo Mundo, a 30-minute boat ride from the Mipaya gas site. Some 1,000 people live here, including members of the Matsigenka community, one of the indigenous peoples of Peru’s Amazon region, who lives on fishing, hunting and agriculture. On the dirt tracks of the village, which can be reached by boat or helicopter only, people swear by Repsol’s gas. The multinational has selected this area, near the Urubamba river, to set up its regional logistics base with its own airfield, gas compression facility, dormitories and football ground reserved for employees. The company’s presence accounts for the fact that locals have access to electricity, the telephone network and Wifi — intermittently — provided by Elon Musk’s satellites. This is also the reason why you will find in Nuevo Mundo a well-stacked food shop selling bottles of neon yellow Inka Cola, crisps and dried soup mixes, as well as modern dwellings of concrete and glass. One of the houses stands out with its shiny wooden facade. These are the offices of Emmac, a private outfit responsible for environmental preservation. In the room where we meet regional manager Guimez Rios, a glass desk is displayed with pride, as well as a poster praising the achievements of employees.  

“The flare burns constantly. The company says this is necessary.” 

Guimez Rios, Emmac’s regional manager

Guimez Rios carefully takes a water quality measuring tool out of a cardboard box and places it on the desk, as if it were a relic. “They [his colleagues] have yet to receive training to use it,” he admitted. His team, which includes 10 inspectors, is supposed to monitor the ecological impact of Repsol’s gas facilities but in actual fact, he does not have sufficient means. Worse still: he does not have the necessary independence to carry out his mission successfully as Emmac is fully funded by Repsol, as is the expensive tool on the desk. Yet it would be worthwhile if he was able to carry out checks on the Spanish firm’s activity: here and everywhere else in the region, Repsol’s gas burns in the open air. Continuously.

“The flare burns constantly. The company says this is necessary,” says Guimez Rios, one of the very few people allowed into the multinational’s base. No one seems to be concerned about this potentially dangerous situation, not even Guimez Rios. “The company guarantees that the gas is not a pollutant,” says the man in charge of monitoring Repsol’s impact on the  environment and public health. As for Nuevo Mundo’s doctor, he attributes the large number of children with pneumonia to “significant temperature differences”.

Voicing criticism is difficult in a region showered with subsidies from gas companies. For the Megantoni district alone, which includes Nuevo Mundo and some 30 municipalities, fossil fuel firms paid more than €98m in taxes in 2023, according to data from Peru’s Ministry of Economy and Finance. As for wages, they are unbeatable. In 2023, a typical Repsol employee earned €1,843 per month, or seven times the Peruvian minimum wage. The multinational can afford to pay such handsome wages: Peru’s gas makes up 25% of its world reserves and 12% of its oil and gas revenue, reaching more than €600m in 2023. 

Hydrocarbons discharged into a river

Another prime example of the code of silence around the Camisea fields: pollution of the Huitiricaya river. It all started on 12 February 2019, when a complaint was lodged with the OEFA, Peru’s environmental regulation body. The document, obtained by Disclose, had been sent by a former Repsol executive, who was based in the region between 2015 and 2018. He did not respond to requests for comment. The document points out the “presumed pollution resulting from the discharge of highly polluting fluids into rivers and waterways near the Sagari gas platform,” which takes its name from a group of wells operated by Repsol. The pollution, it reads, started “around 2017” and may have been caused by the discharge of production water into the Huitiricaya river, on whose banks Repsol has drilled three wells. This could be contamination with mercury, hydrocarbons or heavy metals, according to a 2014 survey conducted by a company mandated by Repsol and which includes a list of products discharged into the water.

For confirmation, Disclose asked the authorities in charge of extractive industries for the results of the self-monitoring that Repsol needs to carry out every three months at the point of discharge into the waterway. In vain. The environment watchdog’s Guimez Rios, whom we met in Nuevo Mundo, does not have more information. “We have not received any data from Repsol for the past couple of years,” he says. Disclose also attempted to travel to the polluted site in the village of Porotobango to interview locals but the chief of the village of 160 opposed our visit as the issue is too sensitive.

Chemical burn

We managed, however, to talk to someone who lives in Porotobango and requested anonymity. He said on the telephone that the village children have been told not to bathe in the river. He added that skin complaints are still frequent. This seems to be confirmed by two photographs taken in 2023, according to the same source. They show raw wounds on the faces and legs of children who are reported to have come into contact with water from the Huitiricaya river. We showed the pictures to three doctors who said one of the wounds could be the result of a chemical burn. The nurse at the health centre in Nueva Vida, who is responsible for treating Porotobango residents, admitted that she had had to deal with similar skin complaints, but she did not wish to go into details either.

Once the gas produced by Repsol has been extracted from the subsoils of the Amazon jungle, it travels on towards southern Peru through gas pipelines and, again, serious pollution incidents may happen, as was the case in February 2018 when a pipeline was severed following a landslide. Vast quantities of “liquefied natural gas fumes” entered the Urubamba river, a few kilometres south of Nuevo Mundo. Smoke could be seen on the water over a few hundred metres, raising dead fish to the surface, burning vegetation in the area and poisoning the passengers of boats passing by. That is what happened to 12 people, including Yonar Palomino Silvao, interviewed by our France 24 colleague. “We thought we were all going to die. We were suffocating, so much so that we were not able to row,” he said. “The air was so laden with gas that a couple of us nearly passed out.” Another recalled the tears and prayers of passengers who, like him, felt nauseous and had a headache.

A large part of the gas extracted from the Camisea fields ends up at the methane terminal of the Pampa Melchorita site, on the Pacific coast. From there, it is dispatched around the world as liquefied natural gas (LNG), including to France: between April and October 2024, three tankers laden with Peruvian gas docked in France. They delivered 300,000 tonnes of LNG for a prominent client, TotalEnergies. The fossil fuel multinational also enjoys financial support from the Credit Agricole group. In April 2024, Amundi, its investment subsidiary, contributed to a TotalEnergies fundraising campaign by buying some of its bonds. More than €4bn were raised through the operation.

Editing: Mathias Destal
Translation from French: Béatrice Murail