Karoo communities fear long-term effects of fracking

An exhaustive workshop programme on fracking, organised in 17 towns across the Karoo, has highlighted the vulnerability of impoverished communities to short-term development that could bring them more costs than benefits. A report in The Herald notes that this was one of the key concerns to emerge from the workshops, which were run in main centres like Middelburg, Graaff-Reinet and Cradock as well as in smaller towns like Fraserburg in the Northern Cape, Murraysburg in the Western Cape and Cookhouse and Adelaide in the Eastern Cape. The workshops were organised by the Wildlife and Environment Society of SA and the Centre for Environmental Rights. The organisations said leaders from community organisations, political parties and local government attended the sessions. The two organisations said the delegates had 'expressed high levels of concern' about the use of their scarce water for fracking. The report quotes the organisations as saying: 'They fear this will result in increasing demand on an already constrained water supply.' The delegates felt that the development could have unintended and unforeseen negative effects on the health of people and, if this occurred, 'the health services in the region would be entirely unable to deal with this'. It was felt further that the social disruption that would be an inevitable consequence of gas extraction would place too high a burden on already over-burdened social services. Emerging farmers were well represented at the workshops and their concerns had been wide-ranging. These delegates questioned whether private land ownership would be threatened and whether fracking would halt or slow down the land redistribution process, according to the report. Full report in The Herald (subscription needed)

Reiterating some of these concerns, the son of PAC founder and anti-apartheid struggle icon Robert Sobukwe says fracking must be rejected, but there is an urgent need for a more sustainable solution to the poverty and joblessness in the area. According to a report in The Herald, Dini Sobukwe (55) was speaking in the offices of the Robert Sobukwe Trust in Graaff-Reinet, where his father he was born and finally buried in 1978. Asked about the fracking issue and the statements last week by former Western Cape ANC leader Chris Nissen that Shell's proposal to frack the region should be welcomed as a job creator and that it was supported by ordinary Karoo people and opposed only by white farmers, Sobukwe disagreed, according to the report which quotes him as saying: 'The poverty here is severe. Besides the basic hunger it brings, it also brings with it social ills like HIV-Aids, teenage pregnancies and alcohol abuse. But fracking will do nothing to ease these things. It will only destroy the greatest asset of the Karoo, which is its beauty.' Sobukwe said while he was strongly opposed to fracking, he was concerned that the equally strong opposition voiced by farmers was 'focusing too much just on themselves'. 'Why doesn't Shell take all the money it was going to invest in fracking, and invest it rather in solar and wind energy? We've got more than enough of both these resources. This green development could then be linked up with our tourism industry, to build it even more, generating more jobs and revenue,' the report quotes Sobukwe as saying. Sobukwe said he was concerned that while Nissen was mobilising support for the fracking, 'if it is approved, while a few people will get terribly rich, very few others will benefit and the Karoo will be left behind, fracked up', the report notes. Full report in The Herald (subscription needed)

Shell SA plans to store waste water generated from fracking in the Karoo in containers to be appropriately disposed of later, the company's upstream manager, Jan Willem Eggink, has reassured local communities in the Karoo. A report on the News24 site notes that Eggink said the natural shale gas that would be produced from the fracking process, 'typically lies thousands of metres below fresh water aquifers'. 'So it is virtually impossible for liquid - or indeed gas - to reach drinking-water supplies through the localised cracks induced by fracking,' the report quotes Egink as saying. Eggink said that Shell would not compete for drinking water supplies in the arid Karoo region, according to the report which notes that Eggink said that during the exploration phase Shell intended to bring water needed from elsewhere. Full report on the News24 site

If government's moratorium on shale gas exploration in the Karoo continued indefinitely Shell says it may then lose interest in the project, according to a report on the News24 site. Answering questions at the Cape Town Press Club last week, Shell SA upstream manager Jan Willem Eggink is quoted in the report as saying: 'At a certain point the company would lose appetite for the investment. If we do then I hope that those who come after us would adhere to the high standards we have set.' Eggink said that, as far as he knew, the Department of Mineral Resources had not officially notified Shell about the moratorium's extension. Should Shell go ahead with its exploration, the group had estimated that it would invest up to $200m in that phase. Eggink said that should full-scale production go ahead then the investment would increase substantially, the report states. Full report on the News24 site