GRAAFF-REINET NEWS — After the failed consultation in November last year, the scientific team of Prof. Bob Scholes was back in town on Monday, May 16.
Last time people felt the invitation was not handled well, when even the Municipality was not informed, and boycotted the meeting. This time an even bigger team went to greater length to mobilize, however the effect was roughly the same. Some 70 members of the public attended the information session at the Umasizakhe Library, a rather low turnout for such an emotional issue like the threat of fracking to the Karoo. Again, few members of the local community attended and many left early, as the highly technical issue was presented without the benefits of any audio-visuals or posters, and with a poor sound system that made listening difficult for many.
Ward 6 Councillor Maria Meishik welcomed all. Henrik Coetzee from Stellenbosch facilitated the meeting, handing the microphone around. Prof. Bob Scholes from Wits University introduced the “Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) on Shale Gas in the Karoo“, which is a process commissioned by the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEAT) to assess the multi-layered risks and opportunities of fracking in the Karoo in a scientific way to advice Government on the best way forward.
At present this three-stage process (Process Set-Up, Assessment Studies, and Policy Recommendations) is half way through its 24 months life cycle. The choice of the scientific authors has been checked by the Process Custodian Group (PCG) made up of representatives of civil society, the industry, academic institutions and government officials. The bulk of scientific work has already been done by a large number of authors, who have delivered their first draft of 19 different chapters. These drafts are currently reviewed by external reviewers. Soon the drafts will be made public to registered stakeholders on the dedicated website http://seasgd.csir.co.za/ between mid-June to mid-July 2016. There will be another “road show” across the Karoo in July 2016, where the results are presented to the general public. The next event is planned for July 18 again here in Graaff-Reinet.
Prof. Scholes took time to take the audience through the scenarios the team is assessing. The team worked on four different scenarios: No shale gas development; exploration only; 5 TCF productions over 30 years; and 20 TCF over 30 years. They reckon that the high scenario (20 TCF) would be accomplished by four separate shale gas mining blocks, each roughly 30 by 30 kilometres, and each block with up to 100 drill pads. This is about one drill pad every 10 kilometres, but on some areas even closer to each other. The largest impact on the Karoo environment would come not so much from the number and size of the drill pads, but from the thousands of kilometres of roads, pipelines and transmission lines dissecting the Karoo.
The real surprise was a map, which has just been released by the team. The team’s geology experts have made a synthesis of the four different geological studies of the possibility to find shale gas in the Karoo. The four models agree that only an area between the towns of Beaufort-West, Aberdeen, Victoria-West and Nieu-Bethesda holds the highest chance to find shale gas. This is unfortunately also an area with the highest chances of uranium mining. The Southern part of the Karoo between Laingsburg, Prince Albert, Willowmore and Beaufort West (basically the FALCON concessions) has only a very low probability.
On the burning questions of water, the team is surprisingly quiet and repeats the industry pledged that water has to come from outside the Karoo or from deep aquifers that cannot be used for drinking water. That is unproven and unsubstantiated. In the absence of new scientific boreholes in the Karoo shale gas concessions, these questions cannot be answered. The wastewater cannot be injected into the ground as it is done in the USA. But there is no wastewater treatment plant in the Karoo that can handle the contaminated flowback. This is another unsettled question, which the SEA will not be able to answer. The team was at pains not to pronounce on any other results, as they are in the final stage of drafting the 17 chapters, which will be released soon.
Several questions were raised about the readiness of Government, if such an industry would descend onto the Karoo. Local government institutions are already overburdened and some in very poor shape. The team promised that their studies would deal with that. The Academy of Science in South Africa had commissioned a comprehensive study of Institutional Capacity Assessment, which has not yet been published.
The ever important question of job creation was raised. The team promised to not only look into the promises of the industry but also on how many jobs might get lost in other sectors, like agriculture and tourism.
All in all, the process looks well underway. There is only little chance for further inputs by the public. Atty. Derek Light pointed out that the public participation process is woefully inadequate. The people of the Karoo will have only a very short period of four weeks (from mid-June to mid-July) to comment on several hundred pages of scientific studies. The data will be available only online and only to registered stakeholders, with a few hard copies across the Karoo. It will be virtually impossible to digest the many pages of highly scientific texts with condensed findings in this short period of time and to make meaningful contributions.
The proposed road show will suffer from the same limitations as earlier attempts to inform the people, as there will be events only in Graaff-Reinet, Beaufort West, Victoria West, Cape Town and Pretoria. Nobody has invested sufficient time to empower local communities to a meaningful participation. These events will have to rush people through 19 different studies and hundreds of pages of comments and questions. Once the assessment phase is over, the policy recommendations will be dealt with - basically behind closed doors.
Another shortcoming of this study process will be the possibility that while the Department of Minerals is officially part of this study process, it may still go ahead and issue licenses while the results of the study process are not yet in and agreed upon. We can also expect the Parliament to adopt a new version of the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Act (MPRDA,) which may dramatically change the rules of the game while the study lasts. A substantially revised MPRDA will make many of the underlying economic facts of the scenarios obsolete.
A representative from the provincial Department of Water and Sanitation raised the still unsolved questions of where the water would come from. At present, the entire Karoo is a water-stressed region and many townships are even cut off completely from reliable water supplies. Prof Bob Scholes made the extraordinary claim that „we already know enough about the hydrology of the Karoo, and we know enough about the water consumption of the fracking industry”. Besides ducking the question, this claim flies in the face of several Government-sponsored studies from universities around the country and statements from the industry, who desperately try to understand the origin and movement of groundwater in the Karoo. Every new borehole so far presents a surprise and changes the information. It looks as if the results of the ongoing investigations by various agencies and universities on Karoo groundwater will not be incorporated into the SEA, further limiting its usefulness and reliability.
A number of people questioned the lack of outreach and technical empowerment. Very few bursaries have been provided since fracking was first mooted. No educational outreach has been undertaken to local communities. People from the townships asked, who of the stakeholders are actually paid and who are not and why. The puzzled visiting team stated categorically that they had never paid any stakeholder. Even most of the authors would not receive remuneration for their work.
The meeting ended on low note, when people silently filed out of the venue two hours into the proceedings. This was another attempt to present a complicated matter to an unprepared audience. Public participation should be done better.
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