I am Shell shocked! Yes, it's a lame joke, but the judgment by Gerald Bloem interdicting Shell SA and Shell internationally from blasting the Wild Coast with seismic booms truly came as a surprise.
The national wave of protest which broke on Shell and the SA government on the weekend has entered a period of turbulence and reflection. But the ocean of public response appeared to be drawing back to unload another wave on Shell and the government’s survey and fossil fuel ambitions. Thousands of protesters led by a call from the Amadiba Crisis Committee on the Wild Coast, supported by the original group of protesters from Nahoon Reef and wider East London, marched onto 66 beaches on the .
Shell’s seismic exploration off the ecologically sensitive Wild Coast will go ahead after four organisations lost their high court application for an interdict on Friday.
Win or lose, Shell has finally produced its response to the public uproar over the seismic blasting of the Wild Coast which is now on or off depending on the ruling of acting judge Avinash Govindje on Wednesday afternoon. It has taken months of muted response from Shell, or bland legal assertions and even statements of frustration from East London-based Express Petroleum CEO Russell Wells that they were dumping Shell over its internal silence over the survey and uproar.
Fossil fuel-hunting seismic survey ship Amazon Warrior entered Eastern Cape waters on Sunday, raising the local and global human temperature as protest action amassed all along the SA coast.