By Chris Lang
On 7 October 2021, Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., Ltd. received a delivery of “carbon neutral” liquefied natural gas at its Soma LNG Terminal in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. Japan Petroleum Exploration bought the carbon offsets that supposedly make the fossil gas “carbon neutral” from Diamond Gas International PTE. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation, registered in 2013 in the tax haven of Singapore.
In total, 151,689 carbon credits were retired on Verra’s registry on 7 October 2021, all on behalf of Japan Petroleum Exploration. Diamond Gas International bought the carbon offsets from a project in Belize, called the Boden Creek Ecological Preserve Forest Carbon Project.
The Boden Creek Ecological Preserve Carbon Project
The project description document for the project, dated 2011, explains that the Boden Creek Ecological Preserve is a private reserve covering a total of 5,213 hectares. The project area covers 3,980 hectares. An area of 1,233 hectares was excluded from the project area because for at least 10 years before the project started (2005) that land was not forested.
The previous owner of the land was in the “process of removing timber and converting the property to a banana plantation”. The project description document states that “The baseline scenario therefore is considered to be a continuation of that process of conversion.”
This is despite the fact that since 2004, Boden Creek Ecological Preserve – the owner of the land, was looking at ecotourism and sales of carbon offsets as a way of profiting from the land, instead of converting it to a banana plantation.
A company called Belize Lodge and Excursions ran an ecotourism operation in the reserve. On its website, in July 2010, Belize Lodge and Excursions stated that,
Boden Creek Ecological Preserve (BCEP), a Belizean private not-for-profit Organization, is dedicated to protecting the habitat within the Golden Stream Watershed in southern Belize by providing sustainable economic community development opportunities while mitigating climate change. BCEP has joined forces with Forest Carbon Offsets, LLC to launch the first forest carbon project in Belize using the Climate, Community, Biodiversity Standards. This innovative 24-year project will remove a minimum of 1,874,028 tons carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere so as to mitigate climate change while protecting biodiversity and providing sustainable economic community development opportunities. The project is currently under audit by SCS Forestry, a world-leading independent third-party ISO 14065 verifier.
“Ghost” carbon credits, “borderline dishonest”, and “clearly misleading”
Diamond Gas International bought many of the carbon offsets from the Boden Creek Ecological Preserve in March 2021. By that time, the project no longer existed.
Nikkei Asia describes the carbon credits that Japan Petroleum Exploration used to claim that fossil gas was “carbon neutral” as “ghost” carbon credits.
Nikkei Asia writes that,
The database of Verra, a nonprofit organization in the U.S. that certifies carbon credits from forest preservation projects, lists Boden Creek Ecological Preserve (BCEP) – a local company – as the main operator of the project.
Nikkei examined the documents used for company certification and found that U.S. forest management company Forest Carbon Offsets replaced BCEP as the main operator by October 2017. The project was also controlled temporarily by a U.S. coal company in 2017.
The project generated carbon credits from 2005 to 2015, and none since then. Here’s a table of the number of carbon credits generated each year (extracted from Verra’s database):
| Year | Total Vintage Quantity |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 6383 |
| 2006 | 11961 |
| 2007 | 18092 |
| 2008 | 24827 |
| 2009 | 32219 |
| 2010 | 40326 |
| 2011 | 11551 |
| 2012 | 17428 |
| 2013 | 23265 |
| 2014 | 7795 |
| 2015 | 162 |
| TOTAL | 194009 |
When Diamond Gas International bought carbon credits in March and April 2021 that was the first sale of credits from the Boden Creek Ecological Preserve Forest Carbon Project for more than nine years. The vintage of Japan Petroleum Exploration’s carbon credits ranged from 2007 to 2014. Creating so-called “carbon neutral” fossil gas involved buying offsets between eight and 15 years old.
Gilles Dufrasne, of Carbon Market Watch, told Nikkei Asia that, “attempting to compensate any greenhouse gas emissions with carbon credits from over a decade ago is inappropriate. When this is used to market a fossil fuel as ‘carbon neutral,’ it is borderline dishonest and clearly misleading.”
Enter Fauna and Flora International
In December 2021, Fauna and Flora International bought the land covered by the Boden Creek Ecological Preserve Forest Carbon Project. A Fauna and Flora International spokesperson told Nikkei Asia that,
“The land had attracted considerable commercial interest from third parties, specifically for conversion to agriculture, namely for banana planting.
“The ecological integrity of Boden Creek … was under threat were the land to be bought up for agriculture, so there was an urgent case to secure its future.”
Although Fauna and Flora International bought the land, it did not receive any of the money from the carbon credits, because it does not run the carbon project.
The Fauna and Flora International land purchase hit the news earlier this year when Prince William and his wife, Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge visited Belize on a Caribbean trip aimed at persuading other countries where the Queen is still head of state not to follow the example of Barbados and becoming a republic.
Since 2020, Prince William has been patron of Fauna and Flora International, replacing Queen Elizabeth. Fauna and Flora International is apparently keen to maintain the links between colonialism and conservation.
William and Kate’s visit did not go according to plan. Villagers in Indian Creek, the village that they planned to visit in Belize, held a protest against the royals’ visit. The Indigenous community of Indian Creek is in a land dispute with Fauna and Flora International claiming that their lands were taken from them for conservation.
In March 2022, at the time of Prince William’s cancelled visit, Dionisio Shol, a Youth Leader, told 7NewsBelize,
“For someone like him to say well I’m here promoting conservation, you could actually come talk to the Maya people. Most historians and scientific evidence have shown that Maya people have already done some of this work that they are putting big names to it. So for him to say well I want to save Indian Creek well obviously it’s not happening.”
Forest Carbon Offsets LLC
The company Forest Carbon Offsets LLC still has a website, although the website doesn’t give a lot of information away. The company claims to have “developed multiple projects in Belize focused on avoided deforestation with private landowners”.
But the only project listed on the website is the Boden Creek Forest Carbon Project.
And the only information about the project is a link to the “Verra Registry Database Record 647“.
Jeff Waldon was Forest Carbon Offsets’ Chief Technical Officer.
In 2011, Waldon co-wrote a paper, published in Tropical Conservation Science titled, “A Model Biodiversity Monitoring Protocol for REDD Projects”.
And in 2012, Waldon wrote an article for Reuters Events in 2012, titled, “Growing benefits from forest carbon projects” together with Carl Gade, chairman of the board at Forest Carbon Offsets.
But neither article mentions the company’s forest carbon project in Belize.
According to Waldon’s LinkedIn profile, he was Chief Technical Officer at Forest Carbon Offsets from April 2009 to December 2017.