IN SHORT: South Africa’s offshore oil push has spent four years in court. Shell’s Wild Coast case is at the Constitutional Court awaiting judgment. TotalEnergies lost its Block 5/6/7 environmental authorisation and is appealing. The Iran war, which has pushed crude above $100, has made the energy security argument more urgent than ever for the government.
South Africa’s bid to develop its offshore oil and gas resources has spent four years entangled in its own court system, producing a sequence of rulings, appeals, reversals and escalations that has left Shell, TotalEnergies, and the government repeatedly blocked while the Constitutional Court prepares to issue a judgment that will determine how much of the legal ground activists have won actually holds. The Iran war, which has sent crude above $100 and exposed South Africa’s 75 percent fuel import dependency in the starkest possible terms, has transformed the offshore debate from an energy policy argument into a security crisis.
The litigation runs on two parallel tracks. Shell’s Wild Coast seismic survey rights case began in December 2021 when environmental groups and coastal communities won an urgent interdict halting Shell’s planned seismic survey. The Eastern Cape High Court found in September 2022 that the exploration right was renewed without meaningful consultation with the Mpondo people. The Supreme Court of Appeal in June 2024 upheld the finding of unlawful grant but permitted Shell to pursue a third renewal application subject to proper consultation. Coastal communities escalated to the Constitutional Court. In September 2025, the country’s apex court heard two days of arguments. Judgment is pending.
The second track concerns Block 5/6/7 in the Orange Basin. The Western Cape High Court ruled in August 2025 that TotalEnergies’ environmental authorisation was unlawful. Judge Nobahle Mangcu-Lockwood found the environmental impact assessment failed to assess full socio-economic consequences of a blowout, omitted lifecycle climate impacts, and failed to evaluate cross-border consequences for Namibia. The authorisation was set aside. TotalEnergies, Shell and the government are now at the Supreme Court of Appeal.
The Iran war has reframed every one of these arguments. South Africa depends on imports for 75 percent of its petroleum. Crude surged above $100 following the February 2026 US-Israeli strikes. South Africa has formally approached the Dangote Refinery for alternative supply. Against that backdrop, Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe’s argument that environmentalists are standing between South Africa and energy security has acquired urgency it lacked in 2021. Petroleum Agency South Africa’s CEO Bongani Sayidini has put a number on what is at stake: 27 billion barrels and 60 trillion cubic feet of oil and gas resources.
Bigger Picture: South Africa is simultaneously running a legal system that takes community rights seriously and an energy ministry that needs offshore production urgently. Those two things are not incompatible, but they require a consultation and assessment process that is genuinely robust rather than a checklist run in advance of a decision already made. The court record in both cases shows that what failed was not the law but its implementation. If South Africa wants its offshore resources developed at pace, the fastest route is a process done correctly the first time rather than one that generates four more years of appeals.
Source: World Oil / Natural Justice / Energy Capital Power
