When an oil company promises to suspend hugely controversial work in Africa’s oldest national park it should be cause for celebration. But the commitment by British oil company Soco to withdraw from Virunga National Park...was rife with ambiguity. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So no huge surprise when a leaked letter from Soco assured Congo’s prime minister that reports of a withdrawal were overstated—or to hear the firm’s deputy chief talk of nudging Unesco into redrawing Virunga’s borders. “In light of news announced this morning by various radio channels of our disengagement from oil exploration activities in Virunga National Park, we would like to draw to your attention that this information is inaccurate,” Soco’s country chief in the Democratic Republic of Congo, José Sangwa, wrote to Prime Minister Augustin Matata Ponyo on 11 June...The World Heritage Committee’s official resolutions at Doha called on Congo “to cancel all the oil exploitation permits granted” in Virunga, as “oil, gas and mineral exploration and exploitation are incompatible with World Heritage status...Failure to broker a compromise means Soco’s supporters could switch to Plan B: shifting the park’s borders...The company recently completed seismic surveys and it now needs up to a year to analyse the data. “Soco will process and analyse the data and by mid-2015 will be able to determine if there are areas for drilling, so that the DRC government can take the necessary measures to follow up the exploration or not,” Soco executive Sangwa wrote.