Fracking - Coming to a Karoo Near You

[H. erectus]

Just as a matter if interest, the meeting held in the
small town called Pearston re fracking the Karoo was
facilitated by the same person that handled the Groenkloof
meeting re Skukz hotel, Mr Willem de Waal.

[Puff Addy]

South Africa says shale gas exploration to begin in next 12 months

AFP

Tuesday 8 March 2016 15.32 GMT

The South African government said on Tuesday that exploration for shale gas will begin in the next 12 months, ending years of speculation over the project.

South Africa’s semi-desert Karoo region is believed to hold at least 485 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, but drilling has been delayed by environmental and economic concerns.

“One area of real opportunity for South Africa is the exploitation of shale gas,” the government said in a statement.

“Exploration activities are scheduled to commence in the next financial year.”

The government has said that shale gas could be the answer to the country’s energy challenges, as coal-fired power stations battle to meet the rising demand for electricity.

But the process of fracking used to capture the gas has been opposed by environmentalist who argue that it has the potential to poison the Karoo’s underground water supply.

Fracking involves digging wells up to four kilometres (2.5 miles) deep, before pumping in a cocktail of water and chemicals to crack the shale rock and release the gas.

In 2012, the government lifted an 18-month moratorium on hydraulic fracturing to weigh the environmental and economic implications of the process.

Anglo-Dutch energy firm Shell is one of the companies that have shown interest in the gas exploration, and have expressed concern at the lack of progress in the project.

The company had said it planned to spend $200m for the first exploration phase of six wells if granted a licence to drill.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... -12-months

[Flutterby]

[Richprins]

Thanks, Puffie!

Quite an exhaustive thread here: viewtopic.php?f=303&t=338


Oil dive puts paid to Shell's fracking plans
Mar 16 2015 09:03



Johannesburg - Royal Dutch Shell is pulling back from its shale projects in South Africa due to lower energy prices although it is still seeking an exploration licence for the onshore Karoo basin, its country manager said on Monday.

A more than halving of crude oil prices since June last year has put high cost projects such as shale gas exploration in jeopardy around the globe, Shell South Africa chairperson Bonang Mohale told Johannesburg station Talk Radio 702.

"The reason to go to a low cost holding position... is as a result of a difficult period for world (prices)," Mohale said.

Shell's retreat is a blow to the South African government, which has been criticised by oil firms for delaying issuing exploration licences, most notably in the Karoo, which is believed to hold up to 390 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable reserves.

Shell has been waiting for six years for an exploration licence.

"What is of concern is regulatory uncertainty," Mohale said. "We have waited inordinately long for licences."

Green groups and landowners in the Karoo have argued that exploring for shale by fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, would cause huge environmental damage


http://www.fin24.com/Economy/Oil-dive-p ... s-20150316

[Puff Addy]

Hi Rich,

This can be moved to the other thread if need be.

Kind regards,

Adam

[Toko]

http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/of ... on-1995553

Official warns of fracking pollution
SCITECH/SCIENCE /
09 March 2016 at 12:44pm
By: Tony Carnie
A senior government official has spoken out strongly about the high risks of water pollution from gas fracking in one of the driest countries in the world.

Namisha Muthraparsad, acting deputy director for water use in the national Department of Water and Sanitation, warned yesterday that South Africa, as the 30th-driest country in the world, could not allow petroleum companies to pump contaminated water back underground during the gas fracking process.

“It is too risky, there are too many uncertainties, so we will not allow underground disposal of wastewater and other water produced in the fracking process,” Muthraparsad told a seminar on fracking and unconventional gas production at Cedara agricultural college near Pietermaritzburg.

She stressed that her department was neither for nor against hydraulic fracturing, a technology developed in the US to release natural gases such as methane by fracturing (fracking) deep underground rock formations using a combination of high-pressure water, sand and chemicals.

However, as the government regulator charged with ensuring wise use and protection of South Africa’s dwindling water resources, her department was already saddled with the legacy of underground water pollution from other mining industries.

Because of the shortage of clean surface water in rivers, dams and lakes, it was becoming more essential to protect underground water resources from further contamination. Noting that fracking often involved “mini-explosions” as deep as 5km underground, Muthraparsad said unconventional gas recovery processes led to the release of large volumes of saline water which could be contaminated with radioactive minerals and potentially toxic fracking fluids.

The importance of protecting South Africa’s dwindling supplies of clean water had been underlined by a recent CSIR study that showed that 50% of the country’s water was produced on just 8% of the land surface, in areas such as the uKhlahlamba-Drakensberg mountains and other high-lying “water towers”.

Muthraparsad said she and other officials had travelled to the US, Australia and other nations to gain a better understanding of the potential risks from fracking and other unconventional technologies and she urged local communities to also arm themselves with knowledge.

Her comments come amid recent applications by a Texas-based exploration company, Rhino Resources, for oil and gas exploration rights over nearly 40% of the land surface of KwaZulu-Natal.

Farmers

Speaking at the same seminar, organised by the conservation group WWF and Frack-Free South Africa, anti-fracking campaigner Francois du Toit said farmers in KZN and other parts of the country were facing a “relentless juggernaut” and communities should lobby their political leaders, including King Goodwill Zwelithini, to slow down the gas exploration process.

Saliem Fakier, an economist and head of WWF-South Africa’s policy and futures unit, said fracking had been presented by the government as a potential economic “game-changer”. He challenged this “simplistic message about fracking being an economic miracle”, noting that each fracking well could cost as much as US$20 million (R307 million). As it was difficult to try to “see into underground rock”, up to 90% of wells might not yield economically viable quantities of gas.

With high royalty fees demanded by the government and critical water shortages, the economic viability of gas fracking in South Africa was likely to be marginal.

tony.carnie@inl.co.za

[Lisbeth]

They still do not understand that fracking is harmful and against all the laws of nature. Almost all over the world they've had to stop the process at a certain point because it creates fractures in the underground, which often will be felt many many kilometers away

[Toko]

http://www.iol.co.za/business/news/frac ... ns-1996407

Fracking likely to burden small towns
BUSINESS/NEWS /
11 March 2016 at 07:30am
By: Sarah Wild
Cape Town - Fracking, already controversial for its potential environmental impact, could spell disaster for poor and corrupt municipalities, bringing further harm to areas already poorly governed.

This is one of the possibilities sketched out in an as-yet-unreleased assessment of the possible impact of hydraulic fracturing to recover shale gas in South Africa.

Read: Official warns of fracking pollution

This week, an assessment team of scientists and experts released the first chapter of a highly anticipated report on fracking, and its likely impact, to help guide government policy.

While exploiting the natural gas could provide a much-needed new energy source for electricity-hungry South Africa, the team says it could also inadvertently entrench historical inequality, and disrupt the social fabric of the region where the gas can be exploited.

Commissioned by the government’s interdepartmental task team in May last year, the report is the first science-based assessment of shale exploration in what has been, at times, a highly emotional debate.

The government found that “there is a lack of information locally to enable robust decision-making on the matter”, said the departments of Environmental Affairs, Science and Technology, Water and Sanitation, and Mineral Resources at the launch of the assessment exercise last year.

Assessment leader Professor Bob Scholes said: “The first chapter is a scenarios chapter whose sole purpose is to give the assessment chapters a common baseline from which to work.”

One issue for investigation, the team flagged, is that already-rich areas will benefit from fracking, while citizens in poor areas may miss the economic boom and end up worse than they started.

“Those towns within efficient municipalities are likely to steadily grow their economic base... This will lock in further rounds of investment,” they wrote.

“Where municipalities are poorly skilled, corrupt or politically conflict-ridden, the only force for economic sustainability will be civil servants and middle-class investors, whose numbers may well shrink as they migrate away.”

Shale gas has been touted as a way to boost energy security and development in the country, and move South Africa away from its reliance on coal for electricity generation.

However, civil society and environmental groups have opposed the move to hydraulically fracture the Karoo, saying that it will destroy fragile ecosystems and contaminate groundwater in the arid area.

The government view of fracking has been somewhat more optimistic.

“One area of real opportunity for South Africa is the exploitation of shale gas,” said Rural Development Minister Gugile Nkwinti at a briefing of the economic sectors, employment and infrastructure development cluster this week.

Exploration for the gas was set to commence in the next year, he said. “This will lead to excellent prospects for beneficiation and add value to our mineral wealth.”

However, it could spell disaster for poor and corrupt municipalities, according to the assessment, which is to be released to the public at http://seasgd.csir.co.za.

The assessment will focus on 12 areas: biodiversity and ecosystems services, water resources (surface and groundwater), geophysics, economics (including agriculture and tourism), spatial planning, national energy planning, waste management, human health, air quality, social fabric, visual, heritage resources and sense of place.

Scholes, who is a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, and an associate research at the CSIR, emphasised that the issue of municipal capacity is “an issue raised for investigation by the assessment”.

The shale assessment area extends from Carnarvon in the north, down to Prince Albert in the south, and from just outside Calvinia to Queenstown.

“There is a marked difference between municipalities in the western and eastern parts of the study area,” the authors of the report write. Municipal development in “the erstwhile ‘homelands’ was rudimentary at best, while municipalities in the erstwhile ‘white South Africa’ steadily developed over the decades”.

This disparity in development means that economies in western towns are, in general, more diversified and resilient, while those in the east have higher unemployment rates, and are more dependent on government services.

Incompetent municipalities with a history of poor governance, corruption and a lack of capacity, may not be able to manage the impact and implications of fracking, the authors warn.

“Municipal capacity, as a determinant of development, will be critical in future as many types of investment – including mining, manufacturing, tourism and potentially shale gas exploration, development and production – depend on at least a minimum of municipal competence in key functions such as water provision, road maintenance and disaster management.”

“It is possible that the weaker municipalities may steadily improve their performance. However, their ability to deal with complex aspects, for example, of manufacturing and mining investment will take many years to develop.”

Without these skills, municipalities will not be able to manage the rush of people, the pollution control, the water monitoring, infrastructure safety or any of the myriad areas of concern around shale gas exploration and hydraulic fracturing.

“It is not at all clear whether the municipalities in either the western or eastern parts of the study area can manage these issues, or whether they have the institutional capacity to learn how to manage them,” the authors write.

The influx of people and money into some relatively poor towns will also dramatically affect their social fabric, a collection of intangible variables such as race relations, class systems, intergenerational poverty, among others.

“These dimensions of the social fabric are likely to be profoundly influenced by sudden social changes, whether positive or negative,” the report says.

“Even positive changes, such as new factories or the establishment of new independent power producers in the area may lead to sudden changes in income that can disrupt fragile social systems.”

Boom-and-bust cycles, which often accompany mining activities, are likely to be even more disruptive to these towns, and the disruption will linger long after the shale activity has ended.

CAPE TIMES

[Toko]

http://www.iol.co.za/business/news/shal ... om-1996405

Shale gas in Karoo? Questions loom
BUSINESS/NEWS /
11 March 2016 at 07:30am
By: Sarah Wild
What is fracking?

Hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as “fracking”, is a method to extract gas from shale rock. The gas, which is mainly composed of methane, is trapped in the rock and, in order to liberate it, a fracking fluid (which is a mixture of chemicals, water and sand) is injected at high pressures into the rock. This creates fissures in the rock, which are held open by the sand in the fluid, which allows the gas to escape.

Fracking is a controversial practice. Some say that fracking-acquired shale gas is better for the climate than burning coal. Others say that it damages ground water.

Read: Official warns of fracking pollution

However, since there is no precedent for this in South Africa, the strategic environmental assessment task team’s reports will focus on these issues in later chapters.

There are many question marks about shale gas exploitation in the Karoo: we do not know if there is gas and, if there is, whether it is economically viable to exploit it. The government’s strategic environmental assessment offers four futures, ranging from no exploration at all through to a glut of gas.



No exploration

Even without the discovery of shale, the Karoo is going to change. Climate models show that temperatures in southern Africa are going to increase disproportionately compared to the rest of the world, with semi-arid areas growing. At the moment the annual rainfall in the Karoo ranges from 100mm in the west and 400mm in the east, and water will become scarcer. The higher temperatures, as well as the increased frequency of extreme weather events, mean that land use in the Karoo will change – more game farming (as game is more resilient to drought and disease than other livestock) and a greater reliance on groundwater. This aridity and the lack of development in large tracts of the eastern Karoo will stymie economic development.



Scenario 1

It is 2050 and “shale gas” is a memory in the Karoo. When the exploration began in 2018, there was a great deal of excitement and a number of Karoo towns, especially in the central Karoo Basin, grew plump on the activity. The seismic surveys and drilling activities brought many people through the towns: international experts, trucks hauling equipment to and from the well sites, as well as setting up its infrastructure for crew and waste treatment. It created jobs for unskilled locals but these work opportunities only lasted a few years at most. The activity did trickle down to local businesses, though, and money concentrated in these towns, along with people from surrounding areas.

There were 30 wells drilled in total, split between five different spots. With climate change, water has become scarcer in the Karoo.

But by 2025, no one had discovered shale reserves that were economically viable to exploit. About 5 trillion cubic feet of gas was technically recoverable in the Karoo, substantially less than the 485 trillion cubic feet assumed. So after a period of relatively intensive exploration, companies packed up their equipment, put in place plans to rehabilitate the sites where they had drilled, and left.



Scenario 2

In the central Karoo, a gas-fuelled power station adds a bit of diversity into the Western Cape’s energy supply mix. The 1 000MW open cycle gas turbine is the only downstream application to come of the search for shale gas in the Karoo. The exploration boom of the late 2010s uncovered a relatively modest amount of gas (5 trillion cubic feet) trapped in the shale rock in the Karoo Basin.

All of the production activities take place in an area slightly larger than Stellenbosch municipality (900km²), connected via a pipeline backbone to the power station. Transmission lines had to be installed to link the power station to the Western Cape grid. The power station, with its 150 permanent positions, is a welcome employer in the region, which struggles with unemployment.

New wells are drilled regularly, as the amount of gas that comes out of a well declines quite rapidly over time. At any given point, there are about 600 wells spread out over the production area. These wells have to be linked up, not just to the power plant, but also the water treatment facility, which processes, cleans and reuses some of the water. At best, 50 percent of the water is reused. At worst, none of it is.

Because shale gas exploitation was new to South Africa, initially one in five people involved in the drilling and exploration was a skilled expat. But, over time, the country’s unconventional gas expertise has increased.



Scenario 3

The Central Karoo is a hub of shale gas production following the discovery of about 20 trillion cubic feet of economically viable gas in the area – enough to sustain production demand for several decades. In total, the production area takes up more than double the area of Pretoria (3 600km²). This area is split up into four production blocks, each the size of Stellenbosch, which are distributed around the Karoo.

In the late 2020s, South Africa built a 2 000MW open cycle gas turbine power station, mainly in response to the country’s electricity constraints. This was followed by another 2 000MW station about a decade later. New wells are constantly being drilled to compensate for the older wells that are drying up, creating temporary employment in addition to the permanent jobs at the power stations.

There is also a new gas-to-liquid plant at the coast, fed gas via a pipeline from the central Karoo. It took about five years to build, which included a great deal of haggling over whether it would be located in Gauteng, at the Coega Industrial Development Zone in the Eastern Cape or in Mossel Bay in the Western Cape. Ultimately, it ended up creating 900 permanent positions, excluding the temporary opportunities to lay the pipelines and infrastructure.

CAPE TIMES

[Puff Addy]

All they see is money!