French energy giant TotalEnergies is preparing to submit its final application for approval to drill up to five oil or gas wells between Cape Town and Cape Agulhas. The project has met with opposition from environmental groups, but the company says it is part of South Africa’s coal transition.
The scope and environmental impact process began in May of this year. If the project is approved, the drilling area will cover about 10,000 square kilometers, with the closest point 60 km from the coast and the furthest 170 km.
This application is one of the offshore oil and gas applications off the coast of South Africa. This is part of a wider expansion of multinational companies in Africa, as shown in a recent report by the environmental research group Urgewald, in collaboration with dozens of organizations in Africa and Europe.
TotalEnergies is Africa’s largest oil and gas developer. In this project, he has a 40% stake in the block, and is the operator. Shell has a 40% stake and the Petroleum Oil and Gas Corporation of South Africa (PetroSA) has 20%.
A public participation process concluded last week after meetings in coastal communities including Saldanha Bay, Hout Bay, Kleinmond and Hermanus. This was part of the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA). SRL Consulting independent assessors assessed the impact on marine ecology, acoustic impact, socio-economic impact, fisheries impact, climate impact and air quality impact.
The public will be able to submit public comments until 7 December 2022. All ESIA documents can be accessed here.
The Urgewald report notes that in 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published a roadmap, based on the 2015 Paris climate agreement, to prevent global temperatures from rising above 1.5 °C. “Under this roadmap, exploration for new oil and gas reserves should cease and no oil and gas fields should be developed beyond those already underway by 2021.”
However, the report notes, “in 48 of the 55 African nations, oil, gas and coal companies are exploring or developing new fossil reserves, building new fossil infrastructure such as pipelines or liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals or developing new gas – and coal-fired power stations.”
“These huge fossil expansion plans are completely incompatible with the Paris goals and will lock African countries into an outdated and carbon-heavy energy path,” says the Urgewald report.
But in a summary of its impact assessment report, SRL says the need to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050 “is balanced against the need to grow the economy and create jobs” .
The government “currently promotes the use of natural gas as part of the energy mix until 2030 to serve as a transition towards a carbon-neutral goal and provide the necessary flexibility to complement renewable energy sources,” SRL says.
Oil and gas exploration is one of the South African government’s priorities as part of Operation Phakisa’s ocean economy program to reduce “reliance on costly oil and gas imports”. But some environmental organizations and members of the public say oil and gas should not be in South Africa’s future at all and has no place in the country’s commitment to a “just transition” to zero emissions. carbon in 2050.
Natural gas is neither “sustainable” nor “clean,” he says Janet Solomon, co-founder of the environmental coalition Oceans Not Oil. In its objections to the TotalEnergies project, Oceans Not Oil says the idea that natural gas produces fewer carbon emissions than coal is misleading, due to methane leaks that are common during oil and gas operations.
In addition, Solomon says, renewables are a faster way to meet the country’s energy needs.
Solomon said the ESIA also failed to take into account fishing communities and the impact the exploration project would have on their heritage. “We have a large informal economy that is totally dependent on a healthy ocean, from tourism to fishing,” he said. “The ocean is sacred to many cultures in South Africa.”
Not many fishermen attended the public meeting held in Hout Bay earlier this month to discuss the project. That was because they didn’t know it was taking place, says fisherman Reagan James, head of the Katz Korana Royal House, who lives in Hout Bay and attended the meeting.
“We make our livelihood from the sea… Oil and gas will not benefit our community,” he said.
Greenpeace Africa spokesperson Chris Vlavianos told GroundUp that the TotalEnergies project would be close to several marine protected areas (MPAs). “These are lifelines for local communities,” he said, and nurseries for fish species.
Vlavianos says it “doesn’t make sense” to pursue oil and gas in the context of the “just transition”. “It will do nothing but lock us into a high-emissions trajectory, with little real economic benefit for people on the ground. Often, the jobs and economic improvement these projects promise do not materialize.”
The environmental assessment summary does show that the exploration project overlaps areas where four species are fished, but suggests that with communication and coordination with fishermen, its impact can be mitigated. The report notes that many people “depend directly on the ocean and coast for their livelihoods and their social and spiritual well-being.”
Els Vermeulen, director of the Whale Unit at the University of Pretoria’s Mammal Research Institute, who attended the meeting in Hermanus, said she had no major concerns about the project’s impact on whales and mammal. He said the impact assessment had been well done, that the exploration would be short-term and not during the whale migration season.
TotalEnergies spokeswoman Stéphanie Dezaunay said: “In South Africa, TotalEnergies is positioning itself as a player in the evolution of the country’s energy mix as part of the necessary transition from coal to renewables and gas .
“South Africa’s economy is still primarily coal-based, accounting for 80% of its current electricity generation. Access to energy, and in particular meeting the growing demand for electricity, is one of major concerns in South Africa, where load shedding and blackouts have been almost daily for almost 15 years and where air pollution from fine particles linked to coal burning is frequent,” Dezaunay said.
He said using gas instead of coal would halve carbon emissions and “drastically reduce air pollution”. TotalEnergies was also working on solar and wind power, he said.
Asked how much of the project’s output would be used in the domestic market and how much would be exported, he did not respond at the time of publication.
The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy did not respond to questions from GroundUp.
