Global anti-fracking day could be next Saturday, 22 September – or maybe not. It depends on whose website you are looking at or which movement you belong to.
Global anti-fracking day could be next Saturday, 22 September – or maybe not. It depends on whose website you are looking at or which movement you belong to.
The Karoo towns of Nieu-Bethesda and Graaff-Reinet held their Global Anti-Fracking day on 28 July, but many other towns and organisations around the world will be holding their protest events next weekend.
Cabinet’s decision earlier this month to lift the moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the Karoo, has sparked a wave of protests and petitions all over the country.
Even here in Grahamstown Andrew Hunter, the Dean of the Anglican Cathedral, is party to a proposal to make the church an “eco-church” and has distributed an online memorandum with the following preamble: “As concerned South African citizens, we condemn the SA Government’s decision to lift the moratorium on fracking in South Africa. We urge our government not to fall for the empty promises of multinational companies at the expense of future generations of our country. The state has a key role to play in putting the people first. South Africa is not for sale!”
Global Frackdown! (www.globalfrackdown.org) – an international anti-fracking organisation has issued a call to all South Africans living in or near Cape Town to join a protest action in front of the gates of Parliament at 10.30 on Saturday morning. Several organisations including Earthlife Africa, the Southern African Faith Communities' Environment Institute, Climate Justice Campaign, Treasure Karoo Action Group (TKAG) and others are supporting the action aimed at securing a permanent ban on all fracking in South Africa.
It was not surprising that before the environmentalist uproar began to settle, mineral resources minister Susan Shabangu said the controversial exploration method will only go ahead under strict supervision of the monitoring committee – which is yet to be set up.
She quickly clarified Cabinet’s decision, saying it had authorised only exploratory drilling, which will precede an environmental impact study and suggested that fracking is unlikely to begin within the next decade.
Royal Dutch Shell, Falcon Oil and Gas and at least three other companies have filed applications for licences to use fracking methods to extract natural gas from enormous tracts of land in the Karoo Basin. According to a US Energy Information Administration report in April 2011 there are an estimated 485 trillion cubic feet of “technically recoverable shale gas resources in the 600 000 km2 basin.
Protesters argue that fracking will pollute water resources in areas that regularly suffer severe droughts. They are also concerned that fracking will release vast quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Jan Willem Eggink, upstream general manager Shell South Africa, acknowledged concerns about the fragile Karoo environment and wrote on the Shell website:
“The Karoo is a special place that must be respected – socially and environmentally. We are committed to the sustainable development of clean-burning natural gas in an environmentally sound manner, while working collaboratively with local communities to ensure all concerns are addressed and considered”.
