Impact of Shell's gas exploration on local communities and marine life

Sustaining the Wild Coast (SWC) NPC has raised concerns that Shell and Impact Africa are disregarding community voices in the ongoing process of extending their exploration rights.

The issue is currently under scrutiny in litigation before the Constitutional Court. On Tuesday, the court heard arguments regarding the fairness of the Supreme Court of Appeal’s (SCA) order, which temporarily suspended the annulment of an exploration right.

The court has reserved its judgment on the matter.

According to the marine conservation body SWC and other applicants, they were denied their right to be heard in the consultation process. 

The environmental group argued that Shell cannot simply dismiss local interests - which includes a spiritual and cultural connection to the ocean - while pursuing its seismic survey application to explore for gas and oil reserves along the Wild Coast.

They further submitted that the order by the SCA was “incompetent and vague”.

At the SCA, the court suspended a high court order which set aside an exploration right and its subsequent renewals pending the outcome of a third application for the renewal of that exploration right.

The applicants have opposed the survey which would blast soundwaves toward the seabed and analyse the echoes and their failed to do a comprehensive consultation process and did not take into account the harm to marine and bird life as well as communities. 

Counsel for the applicants submitted that Shell and Impact “can’t ride roughshod over their (applicants) interests” and said Shell wants to maintain the spoils of an unlawful process in which the applicants were never given a chance to be heard.

The applicants argue that the remedial action through the suspension still did not set out an explicit process which gives directives to Shell and Impact to do a comprehensive consultation process which includes engagements with communities of Amaphonda and AmaXhosa communities.  

On April, 29 2014, the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) granted Impact an exploration right in terms of the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act to undertake exploration activities. Since then, two renewals were granted and Shell acquired a 50% stake in that right.

In October 2021, Shell announced its intentions to begin a 3D seismic survey which is a method of searching for oil and gas beneath the seabed by blasting soundwaves and analysing its echoes. 

Shell submitted that an appropriate remedy in this case, which according to them balances the interests of all of the parties, would be to allow defects in the initial process followed in the application for the exploration right to be corrected in a fresh consultation process as part of the pending application for the renewal of the right.

Meanwhile, the minister for Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, a respondent alongside Shell and Impact, submitted that the applicants are placing the cart before the horse in the absence of a failure of the consultative process which can only be tested when that juncture is reached. 

A fisherman from Port St Johns along the Wild Coast, Ntsindiso Nongcavu, an applicant in the matter said when he heard about Shell’s plans, it felt like his “world was ending” as poor communities especially, are affected by the outcomes of exploration for gas and oil reserves. 

“The ocean is my livelihood. So if they are going to be destroying that, then how will I ever be able to fish again? If I do not fish, my family does not eat. 

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