Victory for the climate and the ocean: TotalEnergies abandons two gas projects in South African waters

29 July 2024

On Monday July 29, TotalEnergies announced that it was abandoning two gas projects off the coast of South Africa. For ten years now, the French oil major has set its sights on gas resources in South Africa’s deep waters, multiplying exploration campaigns off Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. The abandonment of these two projects is a major victory for the associations BLOOM (France) and The Green Connection (South Africa), which have been campaigning against these projects since October 2022. 

In 2014, TotalEnergies had to cut short an initial exploration campaign in South Africa’s deep waters due to the hazardous conditions in the Southern Ocean. Back in the zone a few years later, the French major announced two major discoveries on the Brulpadda and Luiperd wells in February 2019 and November 2020. 

Since then, TotalEnergies has positioned itself as a pioneering company in South Africa, multiplying exploration and production projects at a frenetic pace. On July 29, 2022, TotalEnergies submitted its environmental impact assessment for the drilling of five exploration wells in Block 5/6/7 off Cape Town. And on September 5, 2022, the company applied to the South African authorities for a production license for the Brulpadda and Luiperd wells. 

The successful mobilization of the BLOOM and The Green Connection associations

On October 17, 2022, the environmental associations BLOOM (France) and The Green Connection (South Africa) organized a press conference in Paris, in the presence of MPs Raphaël Glucksmann, François Ruffin and Karima Delli, as well as activist Camille Etienne, to raise awareness of TotalEnergies’ gas projects in South Africa, which had hitherto gone under the radar. In the following days, over 100,000 people signed a petition calling on the CEO of TotalEnergies to abandon this climatically destructive project in South Africa’s deep waters, previously untouched by fossil fuels. 

In the months that followed, the mobilization continued, with legal action in South Africa, meetings in Paris and Brussels between parliamentarians, environmental protection associations, ministerial cabinets, financial players and activists and South African artisanal fishermen, as well as an appeal to the French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to denounce the masquerade of “public consultation” organized by TotalEnergies prior to the launch of its project. 

A victory for both the climate and a fair energy transition  

TotalEnergies’ announcement reveals that its strategy of expansion into fossil fuels is not viable from either an economic or a geopolitical point of view. 

From an economic point of view, TotalEnergies has been unable to reach agreement with the South African government on a gas purchase price for over 18 months. TotalEnergies’ withdrawal from blocks 11B/12B and 5/6/7 shows that the fossil fuel industry’s business model is ill-suited to the economic and social challenges facing emerging countries, as a transition to gas would require them to develop from scratch an industrial infrastructure, gas-fired power plants and technical skills in a sector destined to disappear within the next twenty years. 

Secondly, from a geopolitical point of view, given the many uncertainties associated with a coal phase-out strategy that would simply perpetuate the fossil fuel status quo by plunging headlong into gas, South Africa could find no better partner than the Russian industrialist Gazprom, which has been the target of economic sanctions since the invasion of Ukraine, to bring the Mossel Bay gas-fired power plant back into service, after four years of shutdown. 

Mobilization continues for an end to fossil fuel expansion

TotalEnergies’ announcement shows that its fossil fuel expansion strategy in South Africa is doomed to failure: between citizen mobilization, legal proceedings before French and South African courts, the inability to find a viable economic model, and dependence on Russian players targeted by international sanctions, this announcement represents a thunderclap for the fossil fuel industry, and marks the disavowal of an investment strategy deaf to the climate emergency and the need to embark on an energy transition based on energy efficiency, sobriety and the development of renewable energies. 

In addition to South Africa, TotalEnergies must now reconsider its entire climate-change strategy in fossil fuels, which runs counter to the recommendations of the IPCC and the International Energy Agency. Precisely, three NGOs and eight victims of climate change have filed a criminal complaint with the Paris court, seeking recognition of the greater responsibility of fossil fuel multinationals in climate change, and the need for these companies to turn their backs on fossil fuels once and for all.