A small-scale fishing co-operative and environmental justice organisations have launched a court bid to stop French giant TotalEnergies from exploring for oil and gas off the west coast.
TotalEnergies announced in July that it would withdraw from two other offshore exploration projects, one off the south coast and another located between Cape Town and Cape Agulhas.
But the company intends to go ahead with exploration in the Deep Water Orange Basin between Port Nolloth and Hondeklip Bay, between 188km and 340km from the coast. It will include up to 10 exploration well drills.
The Aukotowa small-scale fisheries co-operative and environmental justice organisations The Green Connection and Natural Justice launched an application in the Western Cape High Court on October 31. They are opposing the environmental authorisation for the project by the department of mineral resources & energy and the department of forestry, fisheries & the environment.
In their founding papers, they argue that natural gas is carbon-intensive and should not be part of SA’s just transition and commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050. They say that the government has failed to assess the ecological impacts the exploration and production of offshore oil and gas will have, and that the oil spill risk assessment is flawed.
While the risk of an oil spill is reported as “unlikely”, the effect of the oil spill is reported as “high” and “very high”. They argue that an oil spill is a “highly significant potential effect” that would be felt “most acutely” by the west coast fishers like Aukotowa “as well as across the country and for years after the event”.
They also argue that the effect assessments failed to consider the socioeconomic impacts on the Aukotowa fishers, who have no other form of employment and whose livelihoods will be destroyed by an event like an oil spill.
In his founding affidavit, the chair of the Aukotowa co-operative, Walter Steenkamp, said the fishers in Port Nolloth depend entirely on the ocean for their livelihoods.
“In recent years we have seen a decline in our fish stocks and changes in their migration patterns. We need to go further out to sea in our small row boats, which is a safety risk for us. We believe that these changes are due to climate change,” said Steenkamp in his affidavit.
“Aukotowa is extremely concerned about the degradation of the oceans and our local coastline, which is at the heart of so much of our history and culture and is also now the source of our livelihoods,” he said.
In its environmental effect assessment, TotalEnergies said that natural gas is a “transition fuel” and “is included in the energy mix of the country to serve as a transition or bridge on the path to carbon-neutrality from 2050 onwards (in terms of the Paris Agreement) and provide the flexibility required to complement renewable energy sources”.
But the environmental groups say the project “flies in the face of SA’s climate commitments”. In a media statement on the court case they cite the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warning against the further development of fossil fuels.
GroundUp sent questions to the department of mineral resources & energy, the department of forestry, fisheries & the environment and TotalEnergies. None of them had responded by the time of publication.
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