Cape Town's High Court has ordered an interim ban on Australian firm Searcher's seismic survey across a number of Orange Basin oil and gas concessions along South Africa's west and southwest coasts.
The ruling comes despite two major oil discoveries in the Namibian part of the Orange Basin announced recently by TotalEnergies and Shell. Most of the basin is located offshore South Africa, where legal battles and local opposition have stymied attempts to further develop the country's nascent offshore exploration sector.
The court ruling, which upholds a temporary order issued last month, is a blow to rights holders in the permit area including South Africa's state-owned PetroSA, TotalEnergies, Shell and Canada's Africa Oil. Searcher's research vessel BGP Pioneer was to undertake a 55-day 2D survey, followed by a 3D survey, in a 297,089 km² permit area located offshore between the South African-Namibian border and Cape Agulhas, around 20km from the coast at its closest point in water depths ranging from 100m to over 4,500m.
The court's decision marks a victory for the fishing communities and environmental campaign groups that brought the application. Small-scale fishermen are concerned that the deepwater blasting used in seismic surveys could irreparably harm marine life and their livelihoods. They say that they were never properly consulted before the reconnaissance permit was granted to Searcher.
The judge described the mindset of SLR Consulting, which oversaw the consultation process, as "worrying" as it did not deem the small-scale fisheries along South Africa's west coast as being directly affected by the seismic survey. It only regarded the commercial sector as worthy to be properly consulted, he said.
The newspaper and e-mail notifications were in English and Afrikaans, but excluded IsiXhosa, which is one of the three official languages of the Western Cape Province. "The illiterate and the poor were by design of the methodology excluded," the judge said. "What should be of more concern is that most of those alleged to have been consulted by SLR deny this," he added.
Furthermore, Searcher did not have an environmental impact assessment or an environmental authorisation in place.
"It was not possible to establish that the seismic survey blasting would not result in unacceptable pollution, degradation or damage to the environment without engaging meaningfully with all interested and affected parties," the judge said.
Only undersea earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are louder than a seismic gun, according to the ruling. The cumulative impact of seismic surveys has not been studied in South Africa, it said. But "physical damage to marine animals has been directly linked to the kind and level of sound emitted during the nature of seismic survey that Searcher is undertaking".
Offshore seismic surveys have become a flashpoint for environmental activism in South Africa. Last year, a South African high court ordered Shell to halt its seismic survey along the Wild Coast in the Eastern Cape following widespread public opposition and nationwide protests.
