Africa-Press – Namibia. An attempt by community forest and conservancy organisations from the Kavango regions to get a court order that would stop further oil and gas exploration activities by the Canadian company ReconAfrica in Namibia has failed in the Windhoek High Court.
Judge Thomas Masuku dismissed an urgent application by the organisations, in which they were asking the High Court to restrain Reconnaissance Energy Namibia from continuing with oil and gas exploration activities in the Kavango regions, this morning.
Masuku also ordered that the applicants in the case – the management committees of the Ncumcara Community Forest, the Muduva Nyangana communal conservancy and the Katope Community Forest, and the Kavango East and West Regional Conservancy and Community Forest Association – should pay their opponents’ legal costs in the case.
The applicants wanted the court to also order that the environmental commissioner in the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism may not allow Recon to drill new exploration wells in terms of an environmental clearance certificate granted to the company.
The respondents in the case disputed that the matter had to be heard on an urgent basis, that the applicants have the required legal standing to apply for the orders which they wanted the court to make, and that the court has jurisdiction to hear the application or can make the orders the applicants were asking for.
Recon’s exploration activities in the Kavango regions have been met by an outcry from environmentalists in Namibia and internationally, based on fears that eventual oil or gas production activities could result in the environmental destruction of the Okavango River delta basin, which is an important ecological area.
More in our next edition.
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