Climate activists protested outside the African Energy Week conference in Cape Town, South Africa, demanding an end to new oil and gas exploration on the continent.Protesters from Greenpeace Africa and Extinction Rebellion accused energy companies of undermining African societies and the environment for their own gain.
The police escorted the activists away after they chanted their slogan and wore T-shirts with the slogan “Make polluters pay” printed on them. Siya Myeza, a climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Africa, condemned the oil industry for generating billions of profits through reported revenues and criticized their impact on the environment.
“Oil companies from overseas have made billions in profits this year alone at the expense of people’s lives, at the expense of ecosystems, at the expense of African lives,” Myeza said in an interview with The Associated Press. Myeza added that he sees the conference as “Africa Exploitation Week” and that the industry promotes “the very destruction of the continent.”
The protest comes as South Africa seeks to attract investment and develop its oil and gas sector to meet electricity demands.
The government wants to diversify into natural gas as a complement to renewable energy, and they believe that gas-to-power projects can help during dry seasons when wind and solar power are low.
Nevertheless, climate activists argue that continued investment in natural gas will only lead to Africa being dependent on fossil fuels when it should be weaning off them. One of the projects that environmentalists are concerned about is the British energy giant’s Shell plan to drill up to five deepwater wells in the Northern Cape Ultra Deep block, located off the coast of South Africa.
The company’s objective is to explore and evaluate the oil and gas reserves in the region. The project’s environmental review has caused multiple challenges, even though it initially cleared the environmental review. Judy Scott-Goldman, an Extinction Rebellion member in Cape Town, explained during the protest that they are against any attempts to boost fossil fuel exploration and production on the continent.
“We’re here to say we don’t want to see any exploration of oil and gas on this continent,” she said in an interview. According to Scott-Goldman, increasing the rate of fossil gas would undermine Africa’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions in line with the Paris climate change agreement.
In addition, the climate change activist added that climate change will have severe effects in Africa, such as droughts, wildfires, flooding, and high food prices, leading to hundreds of thousands of climate refugees. The conflicting views over the development of oil and gas in Africa create an unclear path for nations in the region to balance securing energy needs with protecting the environment.
