Courts temporarily halted Shell’s exploration but fracking in Karoo gets Mantashe’s nod Moreover, during this ruling, the court found that the minister did not comply with the Integrated Coastal Management Act. This Act was passed to promote “the conservation of the coastal environment, and maintain the natural attributes of coastal landscapes and seascapes, and to ensure that development and the use of natural resources within the coastal zone is socially and economically justifiable and ecologically sustainable”. The minister’s non-compliance and lack of consideration of what harm this could bring suggests that more focus was placed on profit accumulation than on the livelihoods of communities that may suffer from this exploration. Awaiting Shell’s third appeal, the minister said he would embark on a seismic quest in the Karoo Basin to explore oil and gas. On 30 August, the minister’s bias for oil and gas continued to shine; he commissioned the first seismic survey of the south-central Karoo Basin to determine whether oil and gas lie beneath the ground. In a published Government Gazette, the minister highlights his intention to explore the Karoo for oil reserves, which may allow South Africa to produce oil locally, resulting in fuel price reduction, energy security and diversifying the country’s energy mix. Raymond Durrheim, professor of geosciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, expressed support for this exploration: “If we want to know if we have any resources at all that could be brought into production, we won’t know until we’ve drilled holes and we won’t know where to drill the holes until we’ve done some geophysical surveys.” He further stated that if surveys are not conducted “you’ve just got no idea what wealth we might or might not have — there might be opportunities that we are missing.” This process of drilling is referred to as fracking — a process that involves deep drilling into the Karoo’s surface to extract oil or gas— which is water-intensive and may harm an already water-scarce area. The “wealth” that advocates of this exploration claim that this project might have will only benefit and put millions of rands in the pockets of the elite (investors, ministers and others). This and the social and environmental impact assessments should be scrutinised. For instance, given the Karoo Basin experiencing water scarcity, the tonnes of water that will be used, and the pollution that can result from this process, farms and towns will not have a plan B for the destruction that will be wreaked. We can learn from these two cases that although it is claimed that economic benefits can come from these oil and gas quests, the ongoing concerns of local residents should be addressed. The inequality and exploitation that characterise such extractivist practices need to be put under the microscope to avert a climate crisis that is at our doorstep and to prevent local people from bearing the brunt of the destruction from costly mega-projects. https://mg.co.za/thought-leader/opinion/2024-10-03-courts-temporarily-halted-shells-exploration-but-fracking-in-karoo-gets-mantashes-nod/ Back Sanele Khakhu is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and a research intern at the Centre for Social Change and Centre for Sociological Research and Practice at the University of Johannesburg. |
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