Text Julienne du Toit and Heather Dugmore. Pictures Chris Marais
Source: This article was taken from the May 2011 issue of Country Life
Fracking has become a dirty word in the Karoo.
Shell, Falcon, Bundu and Sasol are being opposed in their quest for shale gas by an unprecedented wave of public support.
The Karoo veld had seldom looked as lovely as it did just before it turned into a battlefield. Flash floods and engorged rivers had receded by march, leaving the hills green and lush, grasses springing up above the fragrant little bossies. The sheep and cattle grew fat.
But dark forces of destruction lurked on the edges. Government had recently given permission to four consortiums to explore for shale gas (methane), through a new and highly controversial mining method. Shell’s public consultation process prior to exploring for shale gas drew the most attention because it was the most open to date.
Before then, sunset energy (an Australian company that took over a company called Bundu) and Falcon oil and Gas were already through to the ‘second round’ of the process, although this came as a nasty surprise to most people in the affected areas. The collective area that could be ‘fracked’ just by shell, Falcon and sunset is a little more than 150 000 square kilometres, which is a shade smaller than the second largest province in the country, the eastern Cape.
But that’s not all. Sasol, Chesapeake oil and Statoil ASA also had permission from government, but by March had not yet begun to engage with the public. Their concession area is almost as massive as shell’s, stretching northward in a horseshoe around Lesotho for 88 000 square kilometres – equivalent to, or slightly larger than, Mpumalanga.
Put another way, the entire area that could be fracked is around the size of 12 and a half Kruger National Parks. The sheer scale of the project is shocking, especially since there will be wells, compressor stations and condensers every few kilometres over the entire area, along with thousands of very large trucks.
The other shocker is the water. millions of litres of water mixed with chemicals are used. It is wholesale water pollution on a scale this country has never seen before. shell says it is considering seawater or sewage water – but experts say that would only add to the harmful toxins that could sterilise the soil, or worse.
And it affects key food security areas of the country, producing most of south africa’s red meat, fibre and maize. Within it fall critical river catchments – the Great Fish, the Sundays River, the Caledon, and most importantly, the mother river, the orange.
Not surprisingly then, the battle pivots around the fight for clean water. America fracked up the year 2008 will be remembered fondly by frackers. that seems to have been the last year that the vast majority of the press attention they had been getting was positive.
Shell has a long history in South Africa, but its image has been badlydented by its present quest to frack the Karoo.
By 2009, opinion was starting to swing as incidents of water contamination hit headlines. at the end of 2008, a government watchdog body reported on a fracking industrial accident in Colorado, where a worker had been soaked in fracking liquids. He was rushed to hospital, and the nurse treating him collapsed and nearly died from organ failure.
Then the tragedies of Dimock, Pennsylvania, surfaced. people’s water turned brown and stank of chemicals. animals’ hair started falling out. people fell ill. one woman’s borehole exploded.
In Pavillion, Wyoming, methane started to come through the taps and 19 boreholes were found contaminated with highly toxic chemicals, including benzene, a known carcinogen.
The entire area that could be fracked is around the size of 12½ Kruger National Parks
Bradford County in Pennsylvania used to be a quiet rural backwater. Truman Barnett had moved there to his dream retirement home.
Then a fracking company sank a gas well a few hundred metres from his house and installed a noisy compressor. there have been two spills of fracking liquid near his house. a lovely tree-lined pond full of life is now dead. With a shaking voice, he told The Ecologist how his life had changed:
“The only thing you heard at night-time was your heartbeat. now it’s just totally devastated here. inside my home you can hear and see the pictures vibrate on the walls,” he said.
“Our drinking water and our house has high concentrations of lead, they’ve told us not to drink it and don’t bathe in it . . from our heaven it’s turned into our hell.”
In 2009 a man named Josh Fox made Gasland, a documentary that went on to win a Sundance film award and to be nominated for an Oscar. its signature scene is a man holding a lighter to his running tap and setting the water alight. You can see clips of it on Youtube.
The fracking industry dismissed the growing case studies as ‘anecdotal’ and unproven.
The Karoo rises up
The fracking news broke at an interesting time. Memories of the BP Deepwater Horizon’s well-casing failure were still fresh, as was the footage of dying, petroleum-covered pelicans in the gulf of Mexico.
The US Environmental Protection Agency had just launched a three-year study into the effect of fracking on drinking water. Locally, the furore over acid mine drainage in Gauteng was just reaching a crescendo – a massive, expensive problem that had been 100 years in the making.
Respected experts had begun issuing increasingly strident warnings that South Africa was well on its way to critical water shortages by 2020, worsened by an increasingly toxic Vaal river.
In addition, Tunisia, Egypt and other countries had united through social media to overthrow dictators. It was social media that made all the difference in this battleground too, pulling together a fighting force of people hundreds of kilometres apart.
At the end of January 2011, the writer of Timeless Karoo, Jonathan deal, started a facebook page titled ‘Chase shell oil out of the Karoo’. to his astonishment, it grew rapidly, and within a month had 3 000 highly active and indignant members who were posting the latest fracking news from around the world on a constant basis.
From this social media group a real organisation was formed – treasure the Karoo action group (TKAG).
“It was as if the Karoo held out its hands for help, and all these people and organisations just stepped forward. We’ve had the most incredible offers of assistance, pro bono, from scientists, researchers, legal experts, from people volunteering their time for admin, writers, even a futurist.
“The support has been incredible. i wrote Timeless Karoo because i love the place, but i never truly realised how many others love it too.”
The Fighters step forward
And the TKAG was not alone. apart from thousands of individuals, many organisations stepped into the battleground, side by side against the frackers.
There was Earthlife Africa, southern Cape Land Committee (representing the emerging farmers and farmworkers), WWF-SA, the endangered Wildlife trust, the federation for a sustainable environment, BirdLife South Africa, Wildlife and environment society of southern africa’s Centre for environmental rights, Greenpeace Africa, the Wilderness foundation and dozens of farmers’ associations.
That’s in addition to prominent people like industrialist and Karoo champion Johann Rupert and princess Irene of the Netherlands. golfer Gary Player, who owns property near Colesberg, became an interested and affected party, and his brother, environmentalist Dr Ian player, stated his opposition to the fracking. singers Koos Kombuis and Antoinette Pienaar have started singing anti-fracking songs.
Wherever shell met local residents, there was massive and vocal opposition to fracking.
“it would be criminally negligent of shell to push ahead with their exploration application without gathering comprehensive research and data on the Karoo’s highly sensitive water systems, geology and natural environment,” international business leader Johann Rupert told a packed meeting of Karoo farmers, landowners and community members in Graaff-Reinet.
“We are concerned about the superficial manner in which companies targeting the Karoo and other areas for natural gas are treating critical issues raised by attendants, such as water, that can severely and detrimentally impact on the environment in the short, medium and long term,” added Graaff-Reinet attorney Derek Light, who is representing farmers, landowners and communities opposed to fracking across the Karoo.
Geohydrologist Ricky Murray said, “ to responsibly research and understand some of the impacts on the groundwater potential in the targeted area will require a research project of not less than five years.”
“Fracking is like you coming and drilling holes in our mother, and then leaving us to look after her and take her to hospital. Leave the Karoo alone!” said Esmé Senekal from Somerset East.
“This is the last piece of holy nature in this country. no money is worth this. You can’t replace pristine nature with money.” *
What is Fracking?
Short for ‘hydraulic fracturing’, fracking is a method used to release methane gas from shale rocks deep underground.
The methane is also called shale gas or natural gas. But there’s nothing natural or nature-friendly about the process.
It involves injecting millions of litres of water, mixed with sand and toxic chemicals, deep underground at high pressure to release methane gas.
It was first used in America 60 years ago to ease the last oil or gas out of wells.
But this technique was adapted in the 1990s to an even more effective method called horizontal slickwater fracking, which uses far more water and toxic chemical additives.
Every fracking ‘event’ (and a single well can be fracked up to 18 times) uses around six million to 25 million litres of water – equal to between three and 10 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Thousands of shale gas wells in America cover the landscape in many states, only kilometres apart and linked by pipelines, attached to condensers wafting volatile organic compounds, and noisy compressor stations. typically, more than 1 100 truck trips are required per fracking event.
Apart from the vast amounts of water consumed, the main issue causing an outcry in the us is that many tons of chemicals are used. Frackers will say that less than 1% of the fracking mix is chemicals. But that works out to between 60 000 and 250 000 litres of chemicals every time.
The identity of many of the chemicals has been kept secret – corporates say the information is proprietary, like Coke’s syrup mix. But experts have found that many of these chemicals are highly toxic to humans and animals, and cause serious health problems including organ failure, endocrine disruptions, brain lesions and cancer.
It seems an extraordinarily dangerous industry to impose on an ill-prepared, sprawling rural area, particularly since the yield from each well in America typically lasts five to eight years.
Canadian geological engineer professor Marc Durand said the damage could last thousands of year and eventually cost many billions of dollars, in addition to threatening drinking water and agriculture.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that for nearly 50 years shell has been flaring off more gas in Nigeria than it could ever recoup from the entire Karoo. the flares are so massive they can be seen from space.
Ironically, shale gas is being sought because environmentalists long ago labelled it as one of the cleaner energy options in terms of greenhouse gases. it burns far more cleanly than coal or oil.
But WWF-SA climate change expert Richard Worthington notes, “from the early studies we have seen, there is no climate change advantage at all to using shale gas for electricity generation. the fugitive emissions of methane from fracking, as well as the massive fossil-fuel burning infrastructure needed to support it, may have the opposite effect.”
I live in a city. Surely I’m safe?
Unfortunately, with fracking, no one is entirely safe. Consider firstly that the sludge from evaporation ponds in the Karoo is likely to end up in hazardous waste dumps, most of which are in big cities.
Secondly, with the Vaal river swiftly becoming more toxic, and water shortages all over the country predicted by 2020, the Karoo’s fresh clean water will be at a premium.
And then there’s the meat of the matter if dangerous chemicals contaminate groundwater and are drunk by sheep, cattle or antelope in the Karoo, they could bio-accumulate in the flesh, geochemist professor Gary Stevens of Stellenbosch University points out.
This means that people eating sought-after Karoo lamb could unwittingly be exposed to dangerous levels of potentially carcinogenic chemicals.
And thousands of jobless Karoo farmworkers could be heading to the cities to look for work.
For more information on fracking, visit:
- www.karoospace.co.za
- www.treasurethekaroo.blogspot.com
- www.propublica.org, www.kahlfan.blogspot.com
- www.damascuscitizens.org
The proposed fracking will extend over 230 000km² of the Karoo, roughly from Sutherland in the west to Cradock in the east, as far south as Laingsburg and up to Colesburg in the north-east.
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