Shell is in the crosshairs of environmental groups opposed to its offshore drilling activities in South Africa.
Following major discoveries made in neighbouring Namibia, oil companies have launched plans to drill off South Africa’s West coast.
One of the companies that stands to benefit is Shell, which recently received environmental authorization 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 petroleum company stated that resources discovered in the area could improve the nation’s energy security and support economic development.
However, Shell is now facing significant pushback from civil society organizations and coastal communities, who have launched a formal appeal against the government’s decision to authorize the action.
This includes Green Connection, Natural Justice and several communities along the west coast, who claim that the authorization should be rejected.
They also claim that Shell’s Environmental and Social Impact Assessment Report (ESIAR) is 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.”
Van Rooy questioned how South Africans could accept that Shell had received authorization without providing a detailed strategy of how it plans to drill in such a challenging environment.
Furthermore, he 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 plan assumes that the capping stack at Saldanha Bay (a device used to seal damaged wells) could be installed within this period, but this stack cannot reach such depths.
There are only three capping stacks around the world that are rated for the depths Shell plans to drill at, which are located in the United States, United Kingdom, and Singapore.
This has raised the question of how rapidly one of these stacks could be deployed to South Africa in the event of an accident.
Even if the Saldanha stack was usable, the 20-day period is still unlikely given that this estimate is used for far shallower and more accessible drilling projects.
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.
Local communities have also voiced their concerns, stating that they were not consulted and that essential documents were never 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.
History repeating itself
This is not the first time that Shell has been hit with public backlash over its drilling plans in South Africa, as the company’s exploration programme along the Wild Coast also faced challenges in court.
Regarding the Wild Coast, concerns were raised about the Shell’s seismic surveys, which may cause harm to the local marine environmnent.
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, reported BusinessTech.
While all of this is going on, Shell also announced last year that it would exit its downstream business in South Africa.
Shell is the country’s third-largest petrol station chain after Engen and Astron (Caltex), with 600 forecourts.
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