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ONE year when my sister-in-law came from Europe to visit us she expressed a wish to see "the real Africa" – not just Europeanised Cape Town and the surrounding scenery, however magnificent.
She wasn't so naïve as to expect lions roaming the streets, but she did want to find and admire a wild, untamed landscape. So we set off for the Karoo.
We stayed two nights, one on the way – which was an old farmhouse, with bedroom accommodation in a traditional Afrikaner wagon – and one on the way back, which had belonged to some English member of the aristocracy who came with his entourage once a year and held balls outside under the stars on a vast wooden deck.
Both establishments were charming and the hosts were hospitable. But it was the Karoo itself that gave my sister-in-law a feeling of the wide open spaces, the endless land fading into the distance, the scent of the wild herbs growing by the roadside – nothing like the English countryside.
She said she could "hear the silence".
I didn't have the heart to tell her plans were afoot from Sutherland in the west to Graaff-Reinet to "frack" the area. Hydraulic fracturing of rocks – called "fracking"” – is intended to find and exploit shale gas reserves buried deep in underground rock formations.
To access those reserves liquid is pumped down at high pressure into a well that's been drilled into the gas-bearing rock. That causes the rock to fracture, creating cracks through which the gas can escape. The liquid used generally consists mainly of water, mixed with sand and chemicals.
According to one report, many different chemical agents are used and many of these are flagged as dangerous to humans and the environment.
Three oil companies are eyeing the exploration of the gas trapped in the underground shale formations of the Karoo. Shell recently applied for exploration licences for an area of 90 000 sq km – roughly three times the size of Lesotho.
Communities in the Karoo are angry and concerned. Angry, according to one report, because they have little or no say in what happens to the minerals beneath their land and concerned because of the dangerous effects on the environment of shale gas exploration.
Scientists have also begun to express their anxiety to the powers that be. Leading business people and national figures have made their concerns public, armed with information on the result of fracking in the United States, where large areas have been devastated.
Greenpeace has explained the fracturing of a single well requires a huge volume of water – between 9 million and 29 million litres. Chemicals make up about 2% of the fracturing liquid and 15% to 80% of the fluid injected may be recovered – but the rest remains underground, where it's a potential source of contamination of water aquifers.
The fracking process brings a significant risk of contamination of SA's valuable water resources and can pollute drinking water. We know many parts of SA already experience water shortages and the department of water affairs is constantly asking us to save water.
The amount of water fracking requires will put further pressure on water supplies and could bring serious problems at many levels. That could be really damaging to an area such as the Karoo, which already suffers from a lack of water.
The process of fracking isn't regulated in SA and has never been used in this country. But we're lucky. We have – as part of our constitution – a Bill of Rights that contains, most unusually, a section on the environment, the so-called green rights, that states we all have a right to "an environment that is not harmful to (our) health or well-being; and to have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations, through reasonable legislative and other measures that:
(i) Prevent pollution and ecological degradation.
(ii) Promote conservation.
(iii) Secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development."
This is surely a wake-up call to us all to write to our MPs and to the relevant government departments to point out the perils of this proposed development and demand permission to proceed be refused.
Or is fracking – alongside mining in sensitive areas, such as the vicinity of Mapungubwe and in other parts of Africa – one of the cruel conflicts brought about in the wake of the discovery of oil?
Is that the real Africa of today? What shall I tell my sister-in-law?
- Fin24
She wasn't so naïve as to expect lions roaming the streets, but she did want to find and admire a wild, untamed landscape. So we set off for the Karoo.
We stayed two nights, one on the way – which was an old farmhouse, with bedroom accommodation in a traditional Afrikaner wagon – and one on the way back, which had belonged to some English member of the aristocracy who came with his entourage once a year and held balls outside under the stars on a vast wooden deck.
Both establishments were charming and the hosts were hospitable. But it was the Karoo itself that gave my sister-in-law a feeling of the wide open spaces, the endless land fading into the distance, the scent of the wild herbs growing by the roadside – nothing like the English countryside.
She said she could "hear the silence".
I didn't have the heart to tell her plans were afoot from Sutherland in the west to Graaff-Reinet to "frack" the area. Hydraulic fracturing of rocks – called "fracking"” – is intended to find and exploit shale gas reserves buried deep in underground rock formations.
To access those reserves liquid is pumped down at high pressure into a well that's been drilled into the gas-bearing rock. That causes the rock to fracture, creating cracks through which the gas can escape. The liquid used generally consists mainly of water, mixed with sand and chemicals.
According to one report, many different chemical agents are used and many of these are flagged as dangerous to humans and the environment.
Three oil companies are eyeing the exploration of the gas trapped in the underground shale formations of the Karoo. Shell recently applied for exploration licences for an area of 90 000 sq km – roughly three times the size of Lesotho.
Communities in the Karoo are angry and concerned. Angry, according to one report, because they have little or no say in what happens to the minerals beneath their land and concerned because of the dangerous effects on the environment of shale gas exploration.
Scientists have also begun to express their anxiety to the powers that be. Leading business people and national figures have made their concerns public, armed with information on the result of fracking in the United States, where large areas have been devastated.
Greenpeace has explained the fracturing of a single well requires a huge volume of water – between 9 million and 29 million litres. Chemicals make up about 2% of the fracturing liquid and 15% to 80% of the fluid injected may be recovered – but the rest remains underground, where it's a potential source of contamination of water aquifers.
The fracking process brings a significant risk of contamination of SA's valuable water resources and can pollute drinking water. We know many parts of SA already experience water shortages and the department of water affairs is constantly asking us to save water.
The amount of water fracking requires will put further pressure on water supplies and could bring serious problems at many levels. That could be really damaging to an area such as the Karoo, which already suffers from a lack of water.
The process of fracking isn't regulated in SA and has never been used in this country. But we're lucky. We have – as part of our constitution – a Bill of Rights that contains, most unusually, a section on the environment, the so-called green rights, that states we all have a right to "an environment that is not harmful to (our) health or well-being; and to have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations, through reasonable legislative and other measures that:
(i) Prevent pollution and ecological degradation.
(ii) Promote conservation.
(iii) Secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development."
This is surely a wake-up call to us all to write to our MPs and to the relevant government departments to point out the perils of this proposed development and demand permission to proceed be refused.
Or is fracking – alongside mining in sensitive areas, such as the vicinity of Mapungubwe and in other parts of Africa – one of the cruel conflicts brought about in the wake of the discovery of oil?
Is that the real Africa of today? What shall I tell my sister-in-law?
- Fin24
