“There’s no point going full blast into oil and gas as it’s got a limited life. But I would go full blast into renewables.”
These are not the words of an environmental activist in the old Transkei who, in the telling by minerals & energy minister Gwede Mantashe, is determined to keep SA “an island of anti-development” trapped in apartheid-era economic relations.
I stumbled upon this quote in an article in the Financial Times while reading up on Anglo-Dutch oil producer Shell’s now abandoned plans to explore for oil off the Scottish coast. The person who uttered the words was described as one of Scotland’s richest people. According to the article, Ian Wood made his riches during the boom period that followed the discovery of oil in the 1970s, transforming the economy of Aberdeen and surrounding areas in the north east coast of Scotland.
Wood told the newspaper if he was 35 years old then — the article was published in April 2021 — he would be looking at offshore wind and hydrogen as the future of Scotland’s energy sector, not oil and gas. He was also chair of something called the energy transition zone, which seeks to attract funding and to entice renewable energy companies to invest in the area.
What attracted me to this debate was Mantashe’s lengthy Twitter thread aimed at opponents of Shell’s planned seismic survey off the Wild Coast, which has been subject to protest and court challenges, for their “unrelenting attacks”, which he also implied were misinformed as with regards to the impact on sea life.
For Shell this comes fresh from a decision to pull out of a planned exploration north of Scotland, with the project having lost political support from a country that just last month hosted the COP26 climate change conference. In the end, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon withdrew support and said the project couldn't pass a “rigorous climate assessment”. After Shell pulled out, the whole thing was paused as Shell’s erstwhile partners attempt to work out a plan B.
In SA we “must be part of the world and play in the level field like everyone”, Mantashe said, as he went on to note how other countries had carried out oil and gas exploration and were now thriving, naming Norway, Saudi Arabia and Germany. Similar to the argument he had made about coal, he went on to say that Africa “deserves an equal chance to develop its economies on the strength of her natural resources”.
It sounds like a reasonable enough argument, though it seems like he is late to the party. Countries such as Norway and Scotland are grappling with what will come in their future “post-oil” economies while we are looking to imitate what they were doing decades earlier. On the future industries powered by renewable energy where we apparently have ample natural advantage to compete, we seem to be less enthusiastic.
Not surprisingly, Greenpeace is not convinced by any of Mantashe’s arguments about economic development and one might also point to his previous skirmishes at Xolobeni to show how, in any fight between communities and multinational corporations seeking to exploit the country’s natural resources, the former unionist and chair of the SACP will choose the latter. The sweet irony.
Regardless, the statement by Melita Steele, Greenpeace Africa’s interim programme manager, was rather over the top, and something that could have been penned by a student after a rowdy SRC meeting. Shell is a “climate criminal” she stated, and Mantashe was legitimising “a neocolonial extractivist model that leaves nothing but destruction and devastation in its path”.
Of course, in real life things are rarely as simple as that. Mantashe may well be on a fossil-fuel dead end, but the debate is hardly settled globally. In the UK, the failure of the Cambo oilfield marks the beginning of the end for the North Sea oil and gas industry with future big projects unlikely to be approved in the future. Not everyone thinks this is a good thing.
Similar to the debate we have in SA with regard to coal and electricity security, though the latter is a bit of an illusion for SA, the debate is made that the UK is going to need gas and coal for decades. By stopping its own projects, it will simply harm its energy security and increase dependence on imports. And the recent crisis that saw surging prices exposed the danger for Europe in relying on Russian President Vladimir Putin who stands accused of using energy supplies as a geopolitical weapon.
And even Norway, the small country of 5.4-million whose oil wealth has left it with the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund at a staggering $1.4-trillion. That wealth has enabled it to boost its green credentials with virtually every citizen wealthy enough to buy their own Tesla. Almost 80% of new cars sold in September were electric.
It talks a lot about cutting emissions through domestic consumption, but that’s not where it causes the most damage to the climate. Western Europe’s largest oil and gas producer isn’t about to dismantle an industry that has brought it so much wealth, and will continue to do so a few more decades. Clean cars at home while exporting dirty oil for others is a strategy that has served it well so far.
So it’s not unreasonable for Mantashe to ask why not us. The problem is we are entering the oil race when others are already looking at a future when it may not be around any more.
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