Media: a court in South Africa banned Shell from exploring for oil and gas in the south of the country

MOSCOW, Sep 1 — PRIME. A court in the South African city of Makanda has canceled a permit issued by the South African authorities to Royal Dutch Shell to conduct seismic exploration to discover oil and gas in the country’s Eastern Cape, News24 reported.

According to the portal, permission to conduct oil and gas exploration was previously issued to Shell by a decision of the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe. The court overturned it after a lawsuit from several organizations that said seismic exploration would cause irreparable harm to the environment.

“It is clear that the decisions (in favor of Shell – ed.) were not preceded by a fair procedure,” the court said in the decision, which concluded that the authorities “failed to comply with the relevant legal prescriptions.”

It is noted that the permission to conduct seismic work was originally issued to Impact Africa in 2014, and later transferred to Shell. The plaintiffs asked the court to cancel both this decision itself and its subsequent extensions. The claims of the plaintiffs were satisfied.