Courts temporarily halted Shell’s exploration but fracking in Karoo gets Mantashe’s nod

Sanele Khakhu (Mail & Guardian ) 3 October 2024

The fight against oil and gas exploration is far from over. On 27 August, the constitutional court dismissed an appeal granted to Shell and Impact Africa by the supreme court of appeal to conduct oil exploration activities. This comes after environmental groups and local residents boycotted the appeal to explore oil drilling along the Wild Coast, which failed to consider the effects it would have on local people (through public consultation) and the environment.

2021 marked the beginning of the end for Shell’s oil exploration. Amid opposition from local residents and environmental groups, which raised primary concerns such as not consulting local communities and overlooking potential climatic disasters for marine life, the environment and local livelihoods, Shell’s exploration activities were halted by the high court. This resulted from the Wild Coast and environmental justice organisations’ appeal, which argued that the supreme court’s decision to allow Mineral and Petroleum Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe to consider the renewal of the exploration permit was unjust and inequitable.

But this halt by the court was temporary.

As Shell appealed the court’s decision, the court suspended Shell’s “orders to set aside the exploration rights and their renewal, pending the finalisation of the third renewal. This nuanced ruling means that while the exploration rights remain valid, they are subject to additional public consultation and renewal applications.” This must have come as a relief because it meant the oil giant would continue its operations while further regulation and community engagement occurred.

Moreover, during this ruling, the court found that the minister did not comply with the Integrated Coastal Management Act. This Act was passed to promote “the conservation of the coastal environment, and maintain the natural attributes of coastal landscapes and seascapes, and to ensure that development and the use of natural resources within the coastal zone is socially and economically justifiable and ecologically sustainable”. The minister’s non-compliance and lack of consideration of what harm this could bring suggests that more focus was placed on profit accumulation than on the livelihoods of communities that may suffer from this exploration.

Awaiting Shell’s third appeal, the minister said he would embark on a seismic quest in the Karoo Basin to explore oil and gas.

On 30 August, the minister’s bias for oil and gas continued to shine; he commissioned the first seismic survey of the south-central Karoo Basin to determine whether oil and gas lie beneath the ground. In a published Government Gazette, the minister highlights his intention to explore the Karoo for oil reserves, which may allow South Africa to produce oil locally, resulting in fuel price reduction, energy security and diversifying the country’s energy mix.

Raymond Durrheim, professor of geosciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, expressed support for this exploration: “If we want to know if we have any resources at all that could be brought into production, we won’t know until we’ve drilled holes and we won’t know where to drill the holes until we’ve done some geophysical surveys.” He further stated that if surveys are not conducted “you’ve just got no idea what wealth we might or might not have — there might be opportunities that we are missing.”

This process of drilling is referred to as fracking — a process that involves deep drilling into the Karoo’s surface to extract oil or gas— which is water-intensive and may harm an already water-scarce area. The “wealth” that advocates of this exploration claim that this project might have will only benefit and put millions of rands in the pockets of the elite (investors, ministers and others). This and the social and environmental impact assessments should be scrutinised. For instance, given the Karoo Basin experiencing water scarcity, the tonnes of water that will be used, and the pollution that can result from this process, farms and towns will not have a plan B for the destruction that will be wreaked.

We can learn from these two cases that although it is claimed that economic benefits can come from these oil and gas quests, the ongoing concerns of local residents should be addressed. The inequality and exploitation that characterise such extractivist practices need to be put under the microscope to avert a climate crisis that is at our doorstep and to prevent local people from bearing the brunt of the destruction from costly mega-projects.
https://mg.co.za/thought-leader/opinion/2024-10-03-courts-temporarily-halted-shells-exploration-but-fracking-in-karoo-gets-mantashes-nod/

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Sanele Khakhu is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and a research intern at the Centre for Social Change and Centre for Sociological Research and Practice at the University of Johannesburg.


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