South African Govt Greenlights Oil Giant's Offshore Drilling Plan

French hydrocarbon company TotalEnergies can proceed with plans to drill for oil and gas off the Western Cape coast after Environment Minister Barbara Creecy rejected an appeal from 18 NGOs and individuals. They can apply to have the decision judicially reviewed within 180 days, Daily Maverick reports.

This comes after an 11th-hour settlement agreement was negotiated between a West Coast diamond mining company and local small-scale fishing communities and environmentalists narrowly averted what was set to be long and very expensive High Court litigation, writes John Yeld for GroundUp.

The settlement agreement, made an order of court in the Western Cape High Court, has confirmed that crucial conservation areas on the West Coast will not be subjected in the future to diamond mining by Trans Hex Operations, the main respondent in this litigation.

The agreement also ensures that the company's future operations will be conducted in terms of updated environmental management programmes, and that the specific interests of Doringbaai and Olifants River small-scale fishing communities (two of the applicants) will be addressed in a specialist study that will form part of these updated EMPs.

However, the agreement has ended the application for an interdict halting diamond mining operations pending legal considerations about the mining rights involved. This means that the legitimacy of the government's controversial awarding of 30-year extensions to mining rights without any public participation or notification remains unchallenged for now.

This marks another in the list of threats to the environment from mining interests. This includes the legal saga of an Australian company mining company that levelled a defamation, or SLAPP, lawsuit against activists and environmentalists over the Tormin mineral sands project. Industrial plans also include the mining of titanium in Xolobeni on the wild coast in the Eastern Cape province.

French energy giant TotalEnergies also made headlines following the announcement of plans to to drill up to ten exploration wells for oil and gas in the deepwater Orange Basin along the coastline.