The Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) is conducting research to produce a “natural baseline” into the widely publicised exploration of shale gas in the Karoo region.
NMMU hopes the research will address many of the unknowns about the shale gas which is expected to be found near Graaff Reinet.
The three-year, R20m project, co-funded by the Eastern Cape government and the university, will provide data about shale gas potential and the sustainability of its possible exploitation – which can then be used as a baseline comparison worldwide.
“We want to do this research from a completely neutral standpoint, without taking any money from energy companies,” said project co-leader Prof Maarten de Wit, who heads up NMMU’s Earth Stewardship Science Research Institute.
“The Karoo is one of the few major basins in the world where you can still develop a natural baseline. All the other major basins in the world, in the US, Europe and China, have been drilled for oil and gas and suffered severe distortions of their natural plays.”
With the government planning to lift its moratorium on hydraulic fracturing – known as fracking – for shale gas, international energy companies will soon begin exploration activities in the Karoo, but De Wit believes fracking is unlikely to start before 2018.
“This gives us a near five-year window of opportunity to gain new knowledge of the underground water and other natural systems in the Karoo, and use it to establish a forensic baseline that will stand in a court of law.
“Without such a baseline, any contamination or destruction of groundwater and ecosystems or induced earthquakes related to fracking and the mining of gas cannot be tested accurately or proven beyond reasonable doubt,” De Wit said.
Meanwhile, activists and environmentalists in the Karoo have called on government to consult them before going ahead with its decision to start fracking.
The Southern Cape Land Committee, GroundWork (an NPO), South African Catholic Bishops’ Conference and Southern African Faith Communities’ Environmental Institute appealed to the government to consider “the well-being of the people of the Karoo and their natural environment”.
Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu said in Cape Town earlier this month that a public campaign to visit communities “who may be affected” to explain what will happen will be conducted. She said regulations for the exploration of shale gas were being finalised and would be published in due course.
Source: The New Age