Mpaga accused a tiny group of local and provincial authorities, and Perenco, to be attempting to expropriate the land of the Nkomi people for their own interests [2]. The group, Mpaga alleged, was proposing to set up and have decreed a Declaration of Public Utility for the oil zone that goes from Onguendjo to Omboué. The project, according to Mpaga, would be dispossessing the Nkomi communities of their ancestral domains, particularly the territories belonging to the Avogo, Assono and Ekamamu clans, who had been living on these lands for more than 1000 years. Mpaga affirmed the potentially affected areas were lands of historical memory and sacred to the Nkomi people, and included many ancestral cemeteries.

According to information gathered by the ROLBG, NGO members of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Gabon Interest Group, the EITI International Association and Publish What You Pay Gabon, this project had been orchestrated by Perenco and supported by local politicians, under the false pretext of an approach aimed at resolving security issues related to the pipelines that cross the area. As a consequence, the Nkomis people decided to set up a broad community front around the defence of their collective interests, to denounce the manoeuvres and intentions of the authorities and Perenco, while opposing their project.

In December 2012, Perenco had already been involved in the pollution of the Fernan Vaz lagoon, close to the oil production areas, through a 5 km2 slick that drifted towards Port-Gentil, the oil capital. This environmental disaster had been managed in an opaque manner between the Government and Perenco to the detriment of the interests of the populations impacted and affected by the pollution. Because of the opacity and collusion between Perenco and the Government, Mpaga accused, the 'polluter pays' principle had not been applied. More oil spills from Perenco operations had occurred in 2020 in the Etimboué region (at Avocette in April, at Coucal and Missolo in June, at Batanga in September)[3].

In June 2020, international NGOs Sherpa and Friends of the Earth France demanded access to documents that would prove the involvement and decision-making role of Perenco in the management of oil operations in the DR Congo: the company was accused of having caused serious environmental damage in the province of Kongo-Central in the Democratic Republic of Congo [4]. ROLBG also planned to lead an international campaign to denounce Perenco and to bring the case before the Gabonese and French courts. In Mpaga’s opinion, Perenco had to be condemned for its lack of transparency due to its involvement in illegal, opaque activities and for not having met its contractual obligations, notably the clear violation of the hydrocarbon and environmental codes. In January 2021, ROLBG and local communities filed a complaint against Perenco following successive pollution incidents. The first complaint was a civil suit, while the second concerned the costs of cleaning up, rehabilitating the sites and compensating the victims. According to the plaintiffs, oil spills near oil production sites were a regular occurrence, poisoning waterways and land. Pending the outcome of the two complaints filed in Port-Gentil, the plaintiffs also decided to sue Perenco in France, in Great Britain and before the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights based in Arusha. Several oil production sites of Perenco in the department of Etimboué near Port-Gentil were concerned by oil spills [1].

Following the complaints, the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Petroleum issued a joint statement acknowledging three minor pollution incidents. They decided to carry out an operational audit of Perenco's facilities to determine the origin of the oil leaks into the environment [1]. The company was found responsible for the pollution of the Etimboué sites, which the Gabonese government ascribed to the poor rehabilitation of old oil operations prior to Perenco, the deterioration of oil transport lines, and poor treatment conditions for oil waste [3]. The Government launched an operational and functional audit of all Perenco facilities. This audit proposed an emergency action plan to monitor the depollution of the impacted sites, with measurements to be conducted in the dry season, between July and September 2021 [5]. Perenco agreed to repair the environmental damage caused by oil leakages from its pipelines in the various areas in the country [6].

In March, however, according to NGO H2O Gabon, Perenco company officials together with representatives from the oil and environment ministries started touring the villages in the Etimboué mining area to ‘buy the silence of the communities’ and ‘thwart the salutary legal actions initiated by the ROLBG and the communication campaign’ [7]. That was seen as a threat by the company, especially with the prospected re-admission of Gabon to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) announced for October 2021, which would oblige Perenco to comply with the requirements of the EITI 2019 standard through the systematic disclosure of all financial and contractual information related to its activities in the Gabonese Republic [7]. While Perenco recognized its accidental oil spill, it argued that the spill was not of the magnitude claimed by NGOs; that the incident had been immediately circumscribed, and the remediation work was nearing completion. But ROLBG retorted the company would need to pay according to the ‘polluter pays’ principle [8]. In April 2022, the Court of Appeal of Port-Gentil officially gave ROLBG the green light to continue its investigations [9].

In a letter made public on 29 July 2021, the associations Sherpa, Friends of the Earth France and Avocats sans Frontières strengthened Mpaga’s point, denouncing Parenco’s opacity, as well as the absence of any information on the way the company took into account the social and environmental consequences of its activities abroad [10]. In November 2022, Sherpa and Friends of the Earth France sued Perenco because of the ecological damage caused in RD Congo. This was the first time a French company was sued for environmental damage caused abroad [11][12].