It was a rare public appearance by the head of the billionaire Perrodo family’s multinational oil company.
Benoit de la Fouchardiere was a keynote speaker at a conference in Paris this month on investing in African energy projects — an exercise the Perenco CEO doesn’t particularly relish and “practically never happens,” he said in a subsequent brief interview.
“Perenco is a different and strange sort of beast,” he told the conference, seated alongside ministers from three resource-rich countries. “We rarely speak.”
But a series of challenges facing Perenco has focused attention on the company, which has grown into one of Europe’s largest independent oil producers.
In just the past year, it’s been sued in France over allegations of causing chronic pollution in the Democratic Republic of Congo, faced criticism from environmentalists for an oily water spill at a well site in southern England and found itself in the middle of a political outcry related to the French energy minister and her father, who had been a Perenco director. The company has fielded and responded to media inquiries in each case.
Still, it’s done little to dent the fortunes of the Perrodo clan, which includes Francois Perrodo, 46, the race car driver son of the late founder; sister Nathalie Samani, 41; brother Bertrand Perrodo, 38; and mother Ka Yee Wong Perrodo, 71, also known as Carrie. They’re worth about $8.3 billion combined through Perenco, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
A spokesman for the family declined to discuss the clan’s fortune and strategy.
Asked about Perenco’s propensity for discretion, de la Fouchardiere said, “You need publicity when you need to get funding. We are self-financing, with excellent relationships with countries.”
The company has long nurtured a culture of secrecy, divulging scant information about finances and few details about far-flung operations across five continents.
With European bases in Paris and the UK, the firm’s ultimate holding company is based in the Bahamas and “is owned and controlled by trusts for the benefit of the Perrodo family,” according to the most recent annual report of their Edinburgh-based investment holding company. “The financial statements of Perenco SA and Perenco International Limited are not available to the public.”
Strategy Rewarded
Over the past three decades, the company has built a business of buying stakes in mature oil fields and aging installations, often from energy majors like ConocoPhillips and TotalEnergies SE, and wringing out the remaining hydrocarbons. The strategy has paid off for the Perrodo family.
Founder Hubert Perrodo, son of a Breton fisherman, opted to travel and work rather than attend university and was inspired to try his luck in the industry while on a yacht owned by an American oil magnate. Working in Singapore in 1975, he started renting out supply boats to oil platforms before getting into drilling.
Perrodo created Perenco in 1992 to acquire oil and gas assets. His son Francois took over as chairman after Hubert, an avid polo player and skier, died in a hiking accident in the French Alps in 2006 at the age of 59.
Francois played polo while studying physics at the University of Oxford. Both he and brother Bertrand graduated from St. Peter’s College, which has a building that opened in 2018 and was named for their father after Perenco UK donated £6 million ($7.7 million) for the project.
Known as a “gentleman driver” on circuits, Singapore-born Francois is passionate about fast cars, regularly participating in races and possessing an extensive collection. Last weekend he competed in but didn’t finish the 24 Hours of Le Mans competition in France.
The Perrodos’ London-based family office BNF Capital has broadened investments away from hydrocarbons to such areas as real estate, private equity, battery metals and uranium. The clan also has vineyards in Bordeaux — Chateau Labegorce Margaux lists Nathalie Perrodo as the owner — and has invested in London’s upscale Cocotte restaurants.
The bulk of their wealth comes from Perenco, which had gross production of 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from 14 countries in 2022, according to its website. The price of crude has averaged about $75 a barrel in New York so far this year, far lower than the $94 in 2022 when the market was volatile due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
For London-based de la Fouchardiere, who has spent his entire career of more than two decades at Perenco, the company has proven that it’s possible to make a profit from so-called end-of-life fields using innovative techniques to both extract the remaining oil and gas and explore for new sources. Perenco doesn’t have targets to raise output and is satisfied with its current level of reserves, he said.
“We are a family company and can’t grow eternally,” he said. “We want to reinforce our operations in countries where we are already present. We aren’t looking to expand into new countries.”
Congo Wells
This month Perenco announced the commissioning of four wells at Boatou, a Republic of Congo offshore oil field discovered nearly four decades ago by another company. It also signed a new contract for a development off the coast of Cameroon.
But it’s not only a matter of drilling and pumping. In recent months, Perenco has come under criticism from environmentalists for some of its operations, including an oily water spill in March at one of its well sites in southern England. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said it was concerned about the leak at Poole Harbour, which is near protected coastal areas that are important habitats for bird species.
In a statement, the company said cleanup is ongoing and “the affected pipeline will be kept offline until the investigation is completed and thereafter until potential repair options are fully evaluated.”
In November, Perenco was sued in France by a group of non-governmental organizations over allegations of causing chronic pollution in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it runs the only crude project in the country. In 2021, authorities in Gabon started an audit into Perenco operations in the country due to oil spills on land and inland waterways, according to a government statement.
Perenco declined to comment on the ongoing legal process related to the DRC and acknowledged “incidents relating to our activities have occured in the past” in Gabon, which it said are limited “due to the prevention methods put in place.”
Read More: Perenco Faces Congo Pollution Allegations in French Lawsuit
Around the same time, Perenco was at the center of a political storm in France because the country’s energy Minister, Agnes Pannier-Runacher, is the daughter of Jean-Michel Runacher, who was a director until October of BNF Capital and a former Perenco director. Perenco confirmed he held these positions. A government ethics authority subsequently barred the minister from handling topics related to Perenco to prevent potential conflicts of interest.
Perenco also attracted scrutiny following the death of a French oil worker named Hubert Chazarenc, who fell from one of the company’s platforms off the coast of Cameroon in 2020. The incident was covered in an investigative program about the company that aired on national television in 2021.
De la Fouchardiere said in the report that “the system failed” in Chazarenc’s case amid a series of improbable circumstances. “The safety of individuals is non-negotiable,” the company said in a subsequent statement.
At the energy conference in Paris, de la Fouchardiere shrugged off the unwanted attention resulting from the spate of negative publicity, saying the firm communicates where and when it needs to.
“Discretion isn’t opacity,” he said.
--With assistance from Elie Smith and Ben Stupples.