A sober look at fracking

Spring flowers bloom in the semi-desert wilderness of the Karoo where companies want to frack for gas. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings

Spring flowers bloom in the semi-desert wilderness of the Karoo where companies want to frack for gas. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings

Published May 28, 2015

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Karoo farmers and activists have welcomed a new two-year shale and gas exploration study commissioned by government, writes Sheree Bega

 

Johannesburg - Doug Stern has lived and breathed the Karoo for nearly every day of his 64 years. That’s why the fourth-generation livestock farmer has vowed he will fight to the death to protect the unspoilt, desolate landscape from being devoured by gas-hungry energy firms.

Stern lives in Graaff-Reinet, a historical hamlet and verdant oasis known as the gem of the Karoo. It’s also where the anti-fracking movement first took root in 2008, turning farmers like Stern into activists, in his twilight years.

His family has worked the barren Karoo for more than a 100 years but, more and more, his son runs the family farm while he reads up on the latest controversies surrounding fracking across the globe in his quest to rid the Karoo of it. In 2011, he travelled to rural Pennsylvania in the US to witness for himself the “damage” caused by the hunger for natural gas.

“Oh yes, we keep ourselves well informed,” he said. “We’ve seen how communities have been successful chasing companies out of states in the US. New York state has put a ban on fracking now. Poland and Germany too.”

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a controversial method of extracting natural gas from shale rock formations. It uses a corrosive cocktail of sand, chemicals and water. In the Karoo, companies like Shell, Falcon Oil and Gas and Bundu Gas and Oil have long set their sights on the region, keen to drill into its depths to scour for any hint of natural gas.

But they never expected the groundswell of opposition from thousands of landowners like Stern and other Karoo community members. “We feel very chuffed that we’ve been able to keep the hooligans away here in the Karoo,” he said. “They’re in it for money and for money alone. They will not do any form of social upliftment and are trying to hoodwink communities.

“We saw that in America. How people were taken to pieces, their lives devastated, and how their property values depleted by 80 percent because their water was polluted. I said over my dead body will this happen in this country.”

Stern welcomed last week’s announcement by the departments of Environmental Affairs, Water and Sanitation, Science and Technology and Mineral Resources that they have commissioned a two-year strategic environmental assessment (SEA) for shale gas development.

“We’ve been asking for one right from the beginning. The government has done a very good job of listening to us, hence the difficulty the industry is having in getting these exploratory licences. A few years ago, the gas industry was very keen to get in here – they weren’t expecting to conform to any laws.”

The Department of Environmental Affairs noted that “the potential future economic and security benefits of a large resource of natural gas in South Africa could be substantial; as are both the positive and negative social and environmental issues of establishing a domestic gas industry in the Karoo region”.

The assessment will consider exploration and production-related activities and impacts of shale gas development, including the process of hydraulic fracturing and an assessment of “all material social, economic and biophysical risks and opportunities presented”.

The threat of water pollution, Stern believes, is too daunting to consider. “I’ve been able to educate myself about geohydrology, about the movement of water, and in the altitude we have here, there are always fountains. Water rises and percolates upwards from the depth of the earth’s surface. When they start doing their blasting, those pollutants will find their way into the aquifers and migrate upwards.

“There are 34 little towns and communities in the areas these fracking companies have identified – 31 are dependent on underground water. The risk of pollution is just too high.”

Professor Bob Scholes, an acclaimed systems ecologist from the University of Witwatersrand who is also a research associate of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), will lead the R12 million SEA for shale gas development.

It will provide South Africa with the evidence it needs to make informed decisions regarding the exploitation of shale gas, if proved viable, in a “rigorous, independent, participatory and transparent fashion”.

The CSIR will support the work of his team, as will the South African National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi) and the Council for Geosciences.

Scholes did not want to venture an opinion on fracking. “Like, most South Africans I was unable to form a reliable opinion due to the dearth of information… This SEA is very important. It will help to place information into the public domain, test the evidence, and allow the debate to occur in a structured and informed way.”

The SEA will synthesise information from South Africa and abroad. “However, there are some research activities going on in parallel to fill important gaps.”

Sanbi’s chief executive Dr Tanya Abrahamse said its work would provide relevant biodiversity information to the SEA process on the presence, importance and sensitivities of biodiversity features in the study area of 140 000km². “This will contribute to the analyses on environmental sensitivities, studies on acceptable levels of change under different possible scenarios.”

It will also be undertaking “bioblitzes” – rapid biodiversity assessments “as well as mobilising existing biodiversity data in the study area to improve our overall understanding of biodiversity within the Karoo”.

Dr Stefan Cramer, a hydrogeologist at Wits University, said that the two-year lifespan of the SEA was not nearly long enough to conduct an assessment of this kind.

“For good science you have to have at least five years but that is clearly not a political option at this time. The assessment also comes a bit later than we would have wanted. We started talking about shale gas in the Karoo in 2008.

“But it’s an important piece of government activity to bring sense to an hyped and slightly over-the-top debate, which has been shaped more by ideology and wishful thinking rather than facts and figures, both by the quantity and quality of the (shale gas) resource.

“We simply don’t know whether shale gas is actually there, whether it can be mined successfully, reasonably, economically and environmentally responsible. None of the necessary research has been done, so this study promises to do some very important groundwork.”

Fracking, maintain local landowners, would destroy the Karoo, home to a third of the country’s livestock, the third-biggest citrus producer and the country’s top milk producer. But the Karoo is also where more than half the population still live below the poverty line, pointed out pro-fracking advocate Chris Nissen, chairman of the Karoo Shale Gas community forum set up to give a voice to the Karoo’s impoverished citizens in the contentious debate.

“We mustn’t run after the selective morality of the middle-class and the privileged who sit with their cigars, whisky and nice wine and talk about the beautiful Karoo environment, who don’t even know that every Saturday 20 people are buried in Graaff-Reinet because of poverty. Yes, water pollution is a serious concern but so is unemployment.

“The landowners must stop being anti-fracking and start being anti-poverty. Fracking, if done properly, will ensure the environment is not unduly damaged, and that’s what this SEA is going to tell us.”

In March, Shell announced it was pulling back from its fracking proposals in South Africa and was going into a “holding position”, while Falcon and Bundu is yet to hear if it will be granted exploratory licences. “I think they have more chance of falling pregnant at this stage,” said Stern.

The government has stated that while the SEA runs, the process of exploration will not stop. It will soon publish regulations to guide the exploration process, which “is highly imperative in determining the possible existence and magnitude of shale gas, if found”.

This irritates Cramer. “How can you issue licenses for an activity that you still don’t know minimum scientific data about whether it’s advisable or feasible in South Africa?”

Jeanie le Roux, the operations director at Treasure the Karoo Action Group, agreed. “The whole purpose of the SEA is to provide guidance… by allowing the regulations to be finalised without the research conducted is basically writing a blank cheque to these companies.”

She pointed out how the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation just released its own seven-year detailed scientific investigation and public consultation into fracking.

It found high-volume hydraulic fracturing operations would have a potentially significant adverse impact on wildlife and habitats, but that the significant uncertainty around the extent of documented risks and impacts posed to the environment and public health remained a major concern. “We would have expected South Africa to borrow some of the wisdom they have displayed.”

For his part, Cramer believes Shell’s removal of its fracking personnel signals the beginning of the end of fracking. “If Shell can’t do it, smaller companies cannot do it. Shell has stated it is moving out of shale gas globally in Europe and Asia, to a large extent, and that it will stay only in the US and Canada.

“I still believe fracking will never happen in the Karoo. It’s such a high-cost and high-risk location. If you want to frack, you can find better places in this world than the Karoo, where the geology is very complicated, there’s no water, no infrastructure, no industrial base, no skills and little political structure to work with.”

Stern hoped Cramer was right.

“This farm is my life. But I can’t do it if my water is polluted. We’re a water-scarce country, let alone a water-scarce Karoo.”

Weekend Argus

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