Cape Town - The government’s final regulations on shale gas exploration will go to Cabinet’s committee on the economic sector within a fortnight, Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi said on Thursday.
“We have finalised the regulations, we have finalised the communications strategy. They have passed through the inter-ministerial committee so we are taking them now to the economic committee,” Ramatlhodi told a media briefing ahead of his department’s budget vote.
“I think in two weeks’ time we will begin to talk quite a lot.”
The regulations are then expected to be gazetted in June, he added.
Ramatlhodi said government remained committed to ensuring the environment would be respected when exploration for shale gas eventually starts in the Karoo.
Exploration in the Karoo is opposed by a vociferous environmental lobby.
In March Royal Dutch Shell withdrew its bid to begin drilling for reserves in the region, apparently as a result of government’s delays in awarding licences.
The Karoo is believed to have some of the largest reserves in the world and Shell had applied for an exploration licence covering an area amounting to almost a quarter of the region.
Ramathlodi stressed that unstable energy supply was one of the external factors that had a dampening effect on the mining industry.
Asked whether the state had an interest in buying assets being sold by international mining houses as they restructure their local operations, the minister suggested that his department would rather actively support emerging miners who wanted to use the the opportunity to enter the industry.
“If we could get credible black buyers we should encourage them actively, to make sure it is not only the state, and not only the international companies but that our people actually own the mines.”
ANA