Protesters tell Shell to go to hell over Wild Coast

Hundreds of protesters stood with placards at Shell’s garage in Paradise Road, Newlands, on Saturday, to say no to Shell’s planned five-month 3D seismic surveying of the Eastern Cape’s Wild Coast.

Extinction Rebellion organised the protest along with other pressure groups, Green Connection, the Movement for Change and Social Justice, Cape Town Unitarian, and Feed the Future.

They called for motorists to boycott the oil-and-gas multinational if it presses ahead with its survey.

Extinction Rebellion coordinator Judy Scott-Goldman said the seismic surveying could cause irreparable damage to marine species and reduce fish stocks.

“A seismic survey involves firing high-powered compressed airguns towards the sea floor, and assessing oil and gas deposits beneath by measuring the reflected sound,” she said.

That could cause a 100-fold increase in background ocean noise levels and harm marine mammals, such as whales and dolphins, that used sound to navigate and communicate, she said.

Green Connection committee member Natasha Adonis said the impact on the marine ecosystem could, in turn, harm the livelihoods of communities that relied on the ocean’s resources.

Shell was also relying on an environmental-management plan that was almost a decade old, she said, adding that humpback whales might still be moving through the Wild Coast waters during December on their return migrations.

Movement for Change and Social Justice executive member Mandla Majola said it was important to send a clear message to Shell. “They are damaging the environment. By drilling and extracting oil from the ocean, they are killing living species,” he said.

Geronimo de Klerk, the leader of Feed the Future, which works in Khayelitsha, Makhaza, Elsies River and Langa, said: “Our people matter, our oceans matter and we want to feed the future. And we can’t do it if Shell is destroying our sea life and polluting our environment.”

Shell spokeswoman Pam Ntaka said the company was targeting a specific area, defined by its exploration licence, that it believed held underground oil-and-gas deposits.

“This is an exercise to collect data to help us understand if there is oil/gas or not. This is not a drilling exercise.”

Shell had a lot of experience in collecting seismic data, and the company strictly followed the international guidelines of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, she said.

Shell’s survey plans complied with South Africa’s laws, environmental authorisation had been granted in 2014, and an environmental-compliance audit by independent specialists in 2020 had confirmed that control-and-mitigation measures were still “sufficient and valid”, she said.

The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy confirmed this in a statement. It said the survey window period, from December to May, would avoid migratory marine mammals and that the development of the upstream oil and gas industry was part of South Africa’s economic recovery strategy.

In a blow to the protesters, on Friday December 3, the Makhanda High Court struck down an application brought by environmentalists to stop Shell.

Acting Judge Avinash Govindjee said the applicants’ argument that the survey would cause irreparable harm to the marine environment, especially migrating humpback whales, was unproven.

There will, however, be a second application for an urgent interdict, heard on Tuesday December 14, submitted by Sustaining the Wild Coast, All Rise Attorneys for Climate and Environmental Justice and representatives of the Amadiba Crisis Committee and fishing communities of Port St Johns and Kei Mouth.

Shell said on its website that South Africa had already had many similar offshore surveys safely completed.

South Africa was highly reliant on energy imports for some energy needs, and should commercially viable resources be found offshore, they could significantly contribute to the country’s energy security and the government’s economic development programmes, while supporting local employment, the company said.

In an open letter to the government, 24 leading South African marine scientists, marine legal and coastal zone management experts raised their concerns and stated that the approval of the exploratory surveys clearly contradicted South Africa’s agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), in October, to move away from hydro-carbon-based energy towards renewable energies.

They asked for all planned seismic surveys to be stopped until South Africa had a clear policy position on oil-and-gas exploration that was aligned with its climate-change commitments. They want to amend environmental impact assessment (EIA) regulations to include seismic surveys and, among other things, to review the One Environmental System that allows the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy to authorise environmental applications for seismic surveys.

They also asked for the government to consider the use of alternative, less harmful technologies and to commission a strategic environmental assessment of all current and future seismic surveys for South Africa to determine key environmental and social constraints and sensitivities.