May 08, 2023

South Africa's Risky Offshore Drilling Decision

topic:	Fracking
located:	South Africa
editor:	Bob Koigi

The decision by South Africa’s Department of Mineral Resources and Energy to grant TotalEnergies the permit to explore oil and gas in the Orange basin, off the nation’s west coast, is not only a looming environmental disaster but a backtracking of the world’s effort to move away from fossil fuels to fend off the climate crisis.

Part of the company’s exploratory activities include drilling up to five wells and seismic surveying, a process that involves producing seismic images by generating, recording and analysing sound waves that move through the earth. Seismic surveying has been known to have negative impacts on marine animals, inducing disorientation, behaviour changes and death. 

Such exploration activities have the potential to cause oil spills that would have disastrous consequences for the people of Cape, the oceans, marine biodiversity and ecosystem. 

Learn about the consequences of oil spills on humans and the environment.

Indeed, this irresponsible activity endangers the livelihoods of artisanal fishing communities, ecotourism and cultural practices that the coastal people have long embraced and benefited from. 

In the past, oil spills have decimated livelihoods and caused irreparable damage to both ecosystems and economies, as was the case with the 2010 BP DeepWater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that claimed the lives of 11 people and saw more than three million barrels of crude oil spilled for four months. 

The environmental and economic damages were devastating. Individual and community businesses closed down, fish, turtles and birds suffered mass casualties: some studies show these populations are still struggling to reproduce. The oil spill in Nigeria’s oil rich Niger Delta did not only take the lives of the locals, but altered their way of living.

As the world looks at sustainable, clean and green ways to produce energy and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions that are blamed for the climate disaster currently being experienced, governments, such as the South African one, must pause and reflect on energy investments that prioritise people and planet before profit while ensuring that all voices, especially marginalised ones, are heard and respected.

This guarantees that, as governments remain true to the global commitments towards a clean and just energy transition, no lives are disrupted by the generation of sustainable energy sources.

In the words of the United Nations Secretary General General Antonio Guterres: “Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.”

Image by Arvind Vallabh

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