Heritage Cases

AECOM has been appointed by Shell Offshore Upstream South Africa B.V. to conduct an environmental audit on the Environmental Management Programme (EMPr) for exploration in the Northern Cape Ultra Deep Licence Area (comprising Licence Blocks 3013 and 3113). The EMPr was prepared in 2014 and approved on 6 June 2014 by the Petroleum Agency South Africa (PASA) as the competent authority (Approval Reference Number 12/3/1/2742/2/1). It is mandatory for EMPrs to be audited as per Section 34 of the EIA Regulations. The scope of this environmental audit focuses on evaluating the adequacy of the mitigation measures contained in the EMPr to effectively avoid, manage and reduce the potential impacts from exploration activities. AECOM undertook the audit of this EMPr in July 2020, following agreement with PASA on the process and approach. The findings of the audit are: • the 2014 EMPr (which was prepared prior to the amended EIA Regulations) meets the requirements of the amended EIA Regulations (7 April 2017); • the 2014 EMPr is broadly aligned with Good International Industry Practice; • the EMPr presents a comprehensive assessment of the potential impacts from the proposed exploration activities; • the EMPr is considered effective in identifying and assessing the impacts; and • there are no shortcomings in the EMPr. Minor changes were required and an updated EMPr was prepared. You are hereby invited to review and submit comments on the full Environmental Audit Report and on the edits to the Updated EMPr.