CAPE TOWN, July 31 (Reuters) - Stanley Young, a 65-year-old small-scale fisherman from Port Nolloth, stood outside a Cape Town courtroom last month and said what many coastal workers along South Africa’s west coast feel. “The ocean provides for us for generations and we must protect it,” he told Reuters. “If oil and gas comes in here, it will destroy our livelihoods completely.”
Young was there as environmental groups and fishing communities attempted to block a permit allowing TGS to conduct offshore seismic surveys in South Africa’s portion of the Orange Basin, a petroleum province straddling the border between Namibia and South Africa. His presence captured the central tension running through the basin’s future: billions of dollars in potential investment, employment, and government tax revenue on one side, and the daily lives of people whose livelihoods depend on the sea on the other.
The two countries sharing the basin have taken sharply different paths. Namibia has moved decisively, positioning itself as a global exploration hotspot and targeting first oil production by 2030 through TotalEnergies’ Venus project, expected to initially yield around 150,000 barrels per day. South Africa, which holds roughly two-thirds of the basin, has struggled to advance comparable discoveries.
That gap became visible in June. On June 9, Shell announced a new offshore discovery in Namibian waters, describing the subsurface results in petroleum exploration licence 39 as the “most promising to date.” The licence has hosted multiple promising wells since 2022, including Graff-1X, the country’s first major oil discovery. One week earlier, the courtroom in Cape Town was packed with people contesting South Africa’s path forward.
Since 2021, environmental groups and local communities have filed at least four court cases and numerous other appeals against South African offshore ventures and proposed onshore liquefied natural gas projects, according to the eco-justice group Green Connection. Those challenges have delayed up to 10 wells expected to be drilled by 2030, according to South Africa’s petroleum regulator PASA.
The regulatory environment compounds the difficulty. Exploration permits in South Africa can take up to five years to secure, compared with three to nine months in other African countries, according to the Offshore Petroleum Association of South Africa. The permitting process cuts across multiple government ministries and allows for wide-ranging internal appeals against environmental and social impact assessments, as well as judicial reviews that can themselves be appealed.
Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of TotalEnergies, addressed the problem directly during October’s results presentation. “We cannot explore, we cannot spend money in a geography if we have to face courts permanently and the permitting becomes really too complex,” he said, when asked about the company’s operations in South Africa and Namibia. TotalEnergies has acquired acreage along South Africa’s west coast and aimed to drill its first exploration well this year, but those plans now face uncertainty.
By contrast, Niall Kramer, spokesperson for the Offshore Petroleum Association of South Africa, warned of what prolonged delays could cost the country. “A similar route of long delays threatens to frustrate South Africa should there be any discoveries,” he said.
Not everyone in the industry accepts that drilling and community wellbeing are incompatible. Gil Holzman, CEO of Eco Atlantic, pointed to the company’s 2022 Gazania-1 well, which found light oil-associated gases but not in quantities sufficient for commercial development. “We drilled and nothing happened,” he told Reuters. “So, we are living proof that one can actually drill in the basin, leave the surface untouched, and it had zero negative impact on the local communities, zero impact at all on the environment.”
South Africa’s west coast does hold some proven resources. The Ibhubesi gas field is estimated to contain about 540 billion cubic feet of gas and 4.3 million barrels of condensate. Petroleum minister Gwede Mantashe backs oil and gas development and supports industry calls for specialised courts to handle energy disputes, even as some South African politicians advocate for renewable energy alternatives.
A ruling potentially coming later this year from South Africa’s Constitutional Court could reshape the entire landscape. The case, first launched in 2021, involves a challenge by environmental groups and local communities to a Shell-led seismic survey along the tourism-dependent Wild Coast. Environmental lawyer Ricky Stone said the court is expected to determine whether commercial interests can outweigh the rights and dignity of coastal communities.
“This judgment will be one of the most significant precedents in South African environmental and constitutional law in a generation, whatever the Constitutional Court decides,” Stone said.
Shell declined to comment, citing its close period ahead of earnings. For fishermen like Stanley Young, waiting outside courtrooms in Cape Town, the question is whether that judgment will arrive before the decisions that shape their coastline are already made.