South African judges stop Shell oil search

The Constitutional Court has set aside the exploration rights for oil and gas off the Wild Coast British energy giant Shell’s plan to search for oil and gas off South Africa’s Wild Coast has come to an end after the African country’s Constitutional Court set aside its exploration rights on Friday.

The ruling overturns a 2024 Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) decision that had upheld the exploration right.

That decision gave the mineral resources department a chance to keep the project alive by going back to the Wild Coast communities for the proper public consultation that never happened in the first place.

Impact Africa was granted the right in 2014 and brought Shell in on a half share seven years later, with the two companies spending about R1.1bn on it.

It was first scrapped by the Makhanda High Court in 2022, which found the communities had never been properly told what a seismic survey off their coast would involve.

Read more The West’s dirty secret: How most affluent nations poison the Global South Friday’s order reinstated that judgment, striking down the 2014 decision granting the right along with the two renewals that followed.

Seven of the nine judges backed the majority judgment, written by justice Jody Kollapen, with chief justice Mandisa Maya, justices Mathopo, Mhlantla, Theron and Tshiqi, and acting justice Musi agreeing.

The court found that consulting the communities now, more than a decade late, and then taking the decision again would not repair the violation.

“Consultation is not merely about the opportunity to express a view or influence an outcome,” the court said.

“To tell communities, more than a decade after the fact, that they may now be consulted, would not be curative to their right to dignity.

“Instead, it would say to them that the violation of their rights was not a matter of substance but rather a matter of process.” Read more British oil giant faces lawsuit over 500 deaths in Kenya The move would also have allowed the companies to get around a government moratorium that now blocks new exploration rights along the entire SA coast.

The court found the original application was fatally flawed and that Impact Africa “contributed to the unlawfulness of the decision in disturbing ways” .

Any other outcome, it held, “would allow financial investment to outweigh grave constitutional violations and would signal that the rights of affected parties are subordinate to commercial interests” .

The Wild Coast is a 250km strip of Eastern Cape shoreline carrying customary fishing rights and spiritual practices for the communities living along it.