A large part of Russia’s oil and gas exploration fleet is currently using South Africa’s biggest harbor as a launching pad for forays to Antarctica, the planet’s last unmined frontier.
Based in Cape Town with Moscow’s seismic blaster ships, the Kremlin’s mineral prospecting company, Rosgeo, hasn’t tried to keep its activities in Antarctica hidden.
Global annual oil consumption stands at about 35 billion barrels.
Rosgeo insisted that its prospecting was “purely for scientific purposes” and that it didn’t intend to “mine for minerals” in Antarctica.
Doing so would violate part of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, ratified by Russia and 28 other states, including South Africa. A ban on mining in the region took effect in 1998 under the Madrid Protocol, the treaty’s environmental constitution.
South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) government has emerged as a key ally of Moscow since President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
It’s been giving sanctioned Russian vessels safe passage in its waters and allows them to dock in its harbors, which are the most developed in Africa.
“Without South Africa, it’ll be very difficult for Russia to reach Antarctica through other gateway countries,” Cape Town-based environmental scientist Liz McDaid said.
“Australia, New Zealand, and Chile have all indicated they won’t allow Russia’s prospecting ships to dock in their ports, because of Putin’s invasion [of Ukraine] and because they’re concerned that Russian activities in the Southern Ocean will cause unparalleled harm to one of the Earth’s last pristine ecologies,” she told The Epoch Times.
Ms. McDaid said that Argentina, another gateway, is currently able to provide “only limited support” to Russia’s West Antarctic station.
South Africa, one of the closest countries to Antarctica, maintains a research base on the frozen continent, which scientists say is increasingly threatened by climate change.
Pretoria’s top polar official, Lisolomzi Fikizolo, was grilled last week by opposition parties in Parliament about his department’s apparent cooperation with Russia in its attempt to explore Antarctica.
He said repeatedly that his government didn’t know what Russia was doing in the region, despite Rosgeo’s relatively frequent statements—issued by its office in Cape Town—that spell out Russia’s prospecting activities.
Mr. Fikizolo said South Africa “remained committed to preserving the area’s unique character.”
He added that his department is “totally against any mining research” in Antarctica.
When opposition members of parliament pointed out to Mr. Fikizolo that this was exactly what Rosgeo was doing—using Cape Town as the base for its operations—he replied, “It has been allegations with no evidence.”
When presented with Rosgeo’s own 2020 statement, in which it brazenly acknowledged extensive and successful research into oil and gas deposits in Antarctica, Mr. Fikizolo said he needed to “study” the document before responding further.
In the report, PMGE detailed how the Kremlin had supported its mission to “build an information base” on “the mineral resource potential of the Antarctic.”
Last year, again using Cape Town as a launchpad, the company’s vessels explored West Antarctica’s Weddell Sea. International environmental organizations have failed in recent years to proclaim the sea a “marine-protected area,” mostly because of opposition from China and Russia.
Russia’s polar science operator, the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI), also has confirmed that “seismic surveys” were completed on continental East Antarctica in the summer of 2021–2022.
Mr. Fikizolo also said he had “nothing to say” about Russian state documents detailing the Kremlin’s “grand vision for the White Continent and surrounds.”
Representatives of Russia’s natural resources and foreign affairs ministries didn’t respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
During the parliamentary hearing in Cape Town, Mr. Fikizolo said the South African government, “even if it wanted to,” couldn’t question Russian activities in Antarctica, “simply because they are occurring on foreign soil.”
“The South African government’s stance on Russian activities in Antarctica is ridiculous,” Ms. McDaid said. “Russian state agencies have been bragging about finding massive oilfields in marine sedimentary basins on the continent, and its ‘raw material potential’ since the early 2000s. Why talk like this when you don’t intend to commercially exploit your findings?”
South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs told The Epoch Times that it’s “only fair” of it to offer “any and all assistance” to Russian expeditions to Antarctica, since they are “scientific research missions.”
Alan Hemmings, a specialist on Antarctic governance at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, said Russia itself had “all but acknowledged” it was “prospecting” on the continent with the aim of identifying areas of mineral resource potential for possible exploration and development.
He noted that Antarctic prospecting was outlawed by the Madrid Protocol, which prohibits “any activity relating to mineral resources” in Antarctica.
“Of course, there’s science and research involved in trying to locate oil and gas, but in the end, what you’re doing is prospecting for oil and gas. To argue otherwise is absurd,” Mr. Hemmings, who was an observer at the negotiations that resulted in the Madrid Protocol, told The Epoch Times.
“All countries present, including South Africa and Russia, agreed that prospecting was the first of three stages of mineral resource activities, and quite separate from scientific research activities.”
Russia, with support from South Africa, is abusing the treaty’s “freedom of scientific investigation” principle “by trying to pass prospecting off as simple geology,” Ms. McDaid said.
He pointed out that the terms of the Madrid Protocol come up for possible renegotiation in 2048.
“It’s possible that a majority of treaty states could vote to change Antarctica’s mining laws,” he said. “We’re seeing moves in that direction, especially from Russia, but also from other countries. India, for example, has a new Antarctic bill before Parliament that makes a provision for ‘mineral resource activity’ that the Indian government regards as scientific research.”
Elizabeth Buchanan, a polar geopolitics expert at Australia’s Deakin University and a fellow of the Modern War Institute at West Point, said Antarctic mining would be feasible only if oil prices were consistently above $150 per barrel.
“Russian activities in Antarctica could also be about stifling market competition,” she told The Epoch Times. “Moscow perhaps wants to stop other states tapping these oil reserves and becoming energy competitors on the global stage.”
