SA activists urge French and European MPs to stop TotalEnergies’ ‘ocean grab’

Environmental group Green Connection is lobbying French MPs and members of the European parliament to hold French corporation TotalEnergies to account for its “ocean grab” in SA waters. 

TotalEnergies has applied for environmental approval for oil and gas exploration drilling in several areas offshore along the West Coast, Cape Agulhas and Mossel Bay.

The Green Connection held meetings in Paris and Brussels this month with French MPs and members of the European parliament, urging them to put TotalEnergies to “move away from fossil fuels and towards renewables”, said Liz McDaid, strategic lead at the Green Connection.

“We have a climate crisis ... and what Total is doing will certainly make the climate crisis worse,” McDaid said during a briefing in Cape Town on Wednesday. She said the effects of climate change in SA can already be seen with recent droughts and floods.

The visit was supported by French ocean conservation organisation Bloom. During the briefing, Swann Bommier, Bloom’s advocacy and campaigns director, said that about 100 members of the French and European parliaments, as well as mayors, supported the campaign against TotalEnergies.

“It’s heartening to know we have that support in Europe,” said small-scale fisher Christian Adams, who was part of the delegation. He said he was “honoured” to speak to MPs about the effect the TotalEnergies projects will  have on the livelihood of fishers.

Bloom has urged 78 big banks and asset managers, including JPMorgan, Black Rock, Barclays, and Goldman Sachs, not to invest in TotalEnergies’ fossil fuel projects in Africa. Only four of these committed to stop supporting the projects, Bommier said. The financial sector is “addicted to TotalEnergy’s profits”, he said. TotalEnergies reported a profit of about $20.5bn for 2022.

He said Bloom had reminded the French government of its Just Transition decarbonisation partnership with SA.

TotalEnergies did not respond to GroundUp’s queries by the time of publication. In a press statement last November responding to an open letter from the Green Connection and Bloom, CEO Patrick Pouyanné said that the exploration projects would supply gas to the SA domestic market, as part of a contribution to the country’s move away from coal and use of gas as a transition fuel. Pouyanné noted that SA is still heavily reliant on coal for electricity generation and that access to energy is a major concern in the country.

He said TotalEnergies is also developing a portfolio of solar and wind renewable energy generation.

The Green Connection is taking the presidency and the department of mineral resources & energy and energy (DMRE) to court for not implementing section 6 of the National Energy Act through the development of an Integrated Energy Plan.

The DMRE said it received these court papers, and Mantashe would respond “in the course of the litigation”.

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