A deal to protect Africa’s oldest national park from oil drilling could be undone by redrawing its boundaries, according to the British company with a licence to explore there.
WWF, the environmental group, claimed victory last night in its campaign to prevent drilling in Virunga National Park, a world heritage site in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that is home to 200 endangered mountain gorillas.
Sir Richard Branson, Desmond Tutu and the actress Anna Friel have campaigned with WWF to stop the DRC, one of the world’s poorest countries, from seeking to extract millions of barrels of oil that are believed to lie under Virunga.
WWF said that it had reached an agreement with Soco International that the company would withdraw from Virunga