Another big battle for Shell in South Africa
Shell is facing yet another legal challenge to its offshore activities in South Africa, with environmental groups looking to reverse government authorisation to drill.
Following major discoveries made in neighbouring Namibia, oil companies have launched plans to drill off South Africa’s West coast.
A major player, Shell recently received environmental authorisation to drill up to five deep-water wells off South Africa’s west coast via the Northern Cape Ultra Deep (NCUD) oil and gas project.
The company stated that finding resources in the area could improve the nation’s energy security and support economic development, but no timelines were given.
However, it now faces significant challenges with civil society organisations and coastal communities who have launched a formal appeal against the government’s decision to authorise the action.
The groups, including Green Connection, Natural Justice and several West Coast communities, claim that the authorisation should be rejected and the basis of Shell’s Environmental and Social Impact Assessment Report (ESIAR), which they said appears to be riddled with flaws and omissions.
“If allowed to proceed, the proposed project will be the deepest offshore well in South Africa and the third deepest in the world,” said Neville van Rooy, Community Outreach Coordinator at The Green Connection.
“Shell wants to drill 3,200 metres below sea level, which is extremely harsh due to the crushing pressure that results at this depth, which is also always in darkness and consistently near-freezing.”
Considering the project’s challenges, Van Rooy questioned how South Africans could accept that Shell had received authorisation without providing a detailed strategy showing how it would handle a blowout at such depths.
He further questioned how decision-makers considered all the risks or fully assessed the adequacy of the various contingency plans without having emergency response plans.
The groups argued that the final ESIAR unlawfully underestimates the risk and scale of a blowout by relying on an unsupported 20-day oil spill scenario.
This estimates that the capping stack at Saldanha Bay could be installed within that period. However, the stack’s capabilities cannot reach such depths.
There are three capping stacks globally equipped for such depths in the US, UK and Singapore, but there are questions about how rapidly they could be deployed to South Africa.
Even if the Saldanha stack was usable, the 20-day assumption mirrors timeliness used for far shallower and more accessible projects, the groups said.
Shell itself has a 100-day estimate for the Perdido project that was at a shallower 2,450 m depth.
“By modelling an unrealistically short spill duration, the ESIAR significantly underestimates potential impacts and misleads decision-makers. This is a serious flaw in the environmental authorisation,” said Van Rooy.
There are also questions over why communities affected by the project did not receive any consultation, with essential documents not made available.
The environmental groups said this violated the Constitution.
The appellant also noted that the EIA failed to consider the combined impact of Shell’s drilling, with up to 20 other wells already authorised along the West Coast.
Not the first time
This is not the first time Shell’s offshore endeavours have received strong public scrutiny in South Africa.
Shell’s exploration programme along South Africa’s Wild coast has also faced challenges in the courts.
This again comes amidst concerns that the lack of public consultation on the seismic surveys may harm the marine environment.
The Constitutional Court last year ruled that the High Court’s decision to grant the exploration right to do seismic surveys off the Wild Coast by Shell was granted unlawfully.
Although these legal challenges affect its upstream business, Shell announced recently that it would exit its downstream business, which includes its 600 South African petrol stations.
Shell is the country’s third-largest petrol station chain after Engen and Astron/Caltex, and reports suggest that buyers from Abu Dhabi and Switzerland want to purchase the assets.
The appeal document for the NCUD oil and gas project can be found below:
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