[miningmx.com] — Democratic Alliance MP Gareth Morgan has accused Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu of dodging questions about drill site locations for shale gas exploration in the ecologically sensitive Karoo basin.
Morgan also reiterated his call for a moratorium on the granting of permission by the Petroleum Agency of SA as the law was fundamentally flawed.
On Thursday, the day that international petroleum group Shell was due to submit its environmental management plan to the Petroleum Agency of SA for approval, Morgan issued a statement saying that he will ask Shabangu for clarity on the answers given to his parliamentary questions.
“It is fundamentally disappointing that the Minister of Mineral Resources has dodged answering my actual question on the drill sites. She has chosen to interpret the question as only relating to the provision of an Environmental Management Plan by the applicant, when it is clear that the question relates to why the applicants are not being made to submit information on specific drill sites,” Morgan said.
Should Shell be granted approval then it may spend as much as R1.4bn on the exploration phase, Shell South Africa chairperson Bunong Mohale has said previously.
Morgan said that each application to explore for shale gas spans approximately 30 000 square kilometres of land and no specific sites for drilling are defined.
“In the case of Shell they make commitments to have no more than eight drill sites in each application area, but members of the public do not know where these sites will be at this stage,” said.
Applications have been received by the Petroleum Agency of South Africa for explore some 220 000 square kilometres of the Karoo. Shell has asked to explore about 90 000 square kilometres mainly located in the western part of the basin.
US-based company Falcon Oil & Gas was the first company to make an application to explore for oil and gas in the Karoo. Its application centers on using seismic processes rather than drilling.
South Africa’s Sasol is preparing to ask for exploration rights and so is Bundu Oil & Gas.
Shale gas exploration involves a controversial process called n “hydraulic fracturing”, or,”fracking” in which water and sand are pumped into a well in order to get the gas that is contained in soft rock to flow freely. While the prospect of exploiting such a resource may go someway in securing the country’s energy supplies, it can lead to pollution of the underground water system and may impact land use for years.
