South Africa releases draft shale gas regulations
14/07/2022 10:40
CAPE TOWN, July 14 (Reuters) - South Africa has released new
draft rules for public comment for onshore shale gas fracking,
four years after the Supreme Court of Appeal set aside
regulations governing hydraulic fracturing in the ecologically
sensitive Karoo region.
The proposed regulations and minimum requirements apply to
the exploration and production of onshore oil and gas that
requires hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, a process
of extracting natural gas from shale rock layers by creating
cracks to allow the gas to escape.
A decade ago, the Karoo sparked intense interest from
companies including Shell SHEL.L , Sasol SOLJ.J and Falcon
Oil & Gas FO.V , but farmers and environmentalists went to
court to challenge any drilling in the vast semi-arid region,
which saw enthusiasm wane amid regulatory uncertainty.
Last year, the minister of energy told lawmakers that South
Africa's Council for Geosciences had hit pockets of shale gas as
part of ongoing tests in the region. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL2N2N516N
"The regulations identify prohibited activities and
prohibited geographic areas for the use of hydraulic fracturing
technology, which include the use of potable water for hydraulic
fracturing activities and the use of municipal water treatment
facilities for the disposal of wastes from hydraulic fracturing
operations," said the department of fisheries, forestry and
environment.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the department said an
environmental authorization was required for each phase of the
process, including seismic surveys without fracking and the
production phase.
Suffering some of its worst power cuts since it started in
2007, South Africa wants to diversify its energy mix away from
ageing coal-fired power plants prone to breakdowns and help
reduce harmful emissions from the continent's top polluter.
urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL8N2YM3EG
In 2017, geologists at the University of Johannesburg and
three other institutions estimated the gas resource in the Karoo
was probably 13 trillion cubic feet (tcf), the bottom of a range
of estimates that had put deposits between 13 tcf to 390 tcf.
(Reporting by Wendell Roelf
Editing by Bhargav Acharya and Mark Potter)
((wendell.roelf@thomsonreuters.com; +27 21 461 3523;))