Shale Gas Exploitation of the Karoo - A Beginner's Guide to Fracking

Could this be the Karoo in 15 years' time? Shell and several other companies want to explore the Karoo for underground gas. But people are worried that the process will pollute the water and the soil. What does fracking entail? Julienne du Toit reports.

USA Photos sourced from: www.damascuscitizens.org

Fracking Graphic sourced from www.propublica.org

Karoo images: Chris Marais

Fracking is short for ‘hydraulic fracturing’, an American way of breaking up rock deep underground using millions of litres of water, sand and chemicals pumped deep into the earth under high pressure.

This creates cracks in the rock, releasing the gas.

The gas is called methane, but some people call it shale gas or natural gas.

Methane in the Karoo

The methane gas they want to mine for is usually used for heating, and can also be used to make electricity. It is not normally used for vehicles, except specialised ones.

The gas in the rocks lies 4 to 5km underneath the surface. Although fracking has been going on in America for over ten years, no one has ever gone as deep as they would have to do in the Karoo.

Why are people worried?

In America, which has been using this fracking technique for the longest time, major problems are emerging.

Exposure to fracking chemicals has been found to be extremely hazardous. In one famous case, reported on by a US Government watchdog organisation in 2008, a Colorado nurse nearly died of organ failure after being exposed to a worker who had been soaked in fracking liquids.

Even while she was on the brink of death, the company refused to divulge what chemicals she had been exposed to. She still doesn’t know.

Since 2004 nearly 1000 incidents of water pollution from fracking have been recorded where chemicals or methane have contaminated water in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Ohio, New Mexico and Arizona.

Do we know what chemicals are used?

These chemicals have been kept a secret because companies don’t want other companies to know what they are using.

But through studies, scientists have managed to identify about 600 chemicals that are used. The precise mix for each area, though, is different.

Shell have promised to be transparent and tell everyone what chemicals they are using. Falcon and Sunset Energy have not said anything about this.

What problems does fracking cause?

Fracking involves working with explosive gases and toxic chemicals.

The chemicals can lead to serious health problems for humans as well as animals. They include cancer, pain in the body, hair falling out, ulcers and lesions to mention just a few.

Some problems may emerge immediately (and dramatically). For example, houses and boreholes have exploded or water has become polluted and undrinkable shortly after people have starting fracking nearby.

In some areas, the water has so much methane in it that it explodes when a flame is brought near it.

Most of the polluted wastewater would be stored in open evaporation pits. One person described the smell as raw sewage mixed with petrol. Sometimes it is this liquid that leaks into the groundwater and nearby streams.

In other places, it has taken years for problems to emerge – making it very difficult to get compensation. The chemicals used for fracking are often tasteless and have no smell. You wouldn’t know you were drinking anything bad, because some chemicals are dangerous even at very low concentrations.

There are very few laboratories in the country that can test for such low concentrations.

For example, benzene (which has been used often for fracking) is not safe even at anything more than 5 parts per billion (which is like saying five drops of benzene in a big swimming pool). In fact, the American Petroleum Industry says it is not safe at any exposure, either in water or in the air.

Benzene can cause leukaemia, a cancer of the blood cells.

Independent investigators have found that chemicals and methane have contaminated drinking water in many areas of America (and also Australia and Canada).

A terrible thing to leave our children

Once water is contaminated, it can never be used again, ever. Not even for washing clothes or showering. Many of the harmful chemicals used can be absorbed through the skin.

In America they’ve found that land that is fracked and contaminated drops dramatically in value, because no one wants to buy it.

Because very large amounts of chemicals are used (many tons at a time), and because the chemicals differ, and are mixed together differently, many health problems have emerged.

The range from general tiredness to dizziness and disorientation, body pains to cancer. Many of the chemicals can cause very serious health problems like tumours, deformities in unborn babies, kidney and liver damage, nerve damage, respiratory damage, reproductive damage and brain lesions.

Some of these illnesses may only be picked up many years from now.

People with compromised immune systems may be particularly vulnerable.

In America, so many people are worried about fracking and its potential effect on human health that they have just launched a new environmental study into it through the Environmental Protection Agency. The studies will only be completed in 2014.

Concerns in America

Most of the water and chemicals (around 40 to 80%) return to the surface but not all at once, and often it comes up contaminated from radioactive substances underground.

The New York Times newspaper has just run an exposé about this in America. Nearly 16 million people are at risk of having drunk water that may be unacceptably high in radioactivity. This could cause long illnesses and death.

Sometimes the explosive methane keeps on leaking long after the fracking companies have left.

Workers have also not been informed about the dangers they face.

In addition to human health, these chemicals have also caused health problems and deaths in livestock and wild animals.

What happens when they frack?

After they drill a well, they hydraulically fracture (frack) the rock underground using more than 6 million litres of water, some sand and several tons of chemicals.

Every well (in America they are usually a few kilometres apart) is fracked up to 18 times, typically within five years.

Each time they frack a well, they use between 6 million and 25 million litres of water. This is enough to fill between 3 or 10 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Put another way, it that’s about 120 to 500 round concrete farm dams – the kind you see next to windpumps on Karoo farms.

Added into the water is some sand and between 3 000 and 25 000 litres of chemicals.

When they frack, they pump the mixture at high pressure down a steel pipe to break up the rock underground.

The water that comes back up to the surface is polluted with the chemicals, cannot be drunk by humans or animals, and is sometimes radioactive because of radium or uranium underground.

No one knows yet how they will dispose of this water, which will probably be classified as hazardous waste.

Every fracking ‘event’ involves over 1 000 truck trips, there and back, carrying water and chemicals.

No one is allowed to prevent frackers from coming onto their property and mining, because the mineral rights below the ground belong to the Government.

Where do they want to frack?

Government has so far given permits to four companies to explore for methane gas in a very large area stretching right across the Karoo (Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Northern Cape) as well as a large part of the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal.

The total area that could be mined for gas is bigger than the whole of the Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga combined.

Mining for gas (fracking) means that holes must be drilled every few kilometres, so every town and every farm is likely to be affected in some way.

Who wants to frack?

Three foreign-owned companies that have been granted permission by the Government (through Petroleum Agency SA) to explore for gas.

They are Royal Dutch Shell, Falcon Oil & Gas from America, and Sunset Energy (also called Bundu), from Australia.

Shell want to extract gas from about 90 000 square kilometres. That is an area the size of KwaZulu-Natal. It stretches from Bedford in the east to Sutherland in the west.

Falcon Oil & Gas have got a permit to explore 30 000sq km for gas, an area one and a half times the size of the Kruger National Park. In includes the mohair capital of Jansenville, as well as Aberdeen, Rietbron, Merweville and Leeu Gamka.

Sunset Energy has a slightly larger area – 35 000 square km – including Pearston and areas around Graaff-Reinet.

Together they make up an area as big as the entire Eastern Cape.

In addition, a consortium made up of Sasol, American Chesapeake Energy and Statoil ASA has applied to frack an area similar in size to Shell’s – about 88 000 sq km. It includes a large portion of KwaZulu-Natal and most of the Free State.

Why didn’t we know?

Royal Dutch Shell is now busy with their Environmental Management Plan process. They are consulting with the public. But it is very difficult to do that over such huge distances. Still, they have no choice but to do it very quickly. The laws of government only give them 120 days to do it.

Falcon and Sunset Energy have already finished their public consultations. If you didn’t hear of it, it’s because they just sent letters to everyone they thought might be affected – although they admitted that accessing up to date title deeds for landowners was problematic.

Most municipalities, most planning bodies, most people living in townships have not yet heard of fracking because of this rushed process. Or some have heard of fracking, but they’re not sure what to think of it.

Won’t it mean jobs?

Maybe, eventually. Shell have said they will probably be exploring for nine years and until then, there will not really be jobs created.

Don’t we need electricity?

Yes we do. But the gas will soon run out. The richest deposit of shale gas in America, the Marcellus Shale, is double the size of the shale gas deposits in the Karoo, and is expected to be depleted within 14 years to 20 years. This is a very short time frame for future energy planning.

We need to be examining ways of providing power sustainably for our children too.

We cannot make more fresh water, but we can find other ways of making electricity.

Without clean water, there is no life. No food. No jobs.

• For more information, see www.treasurethekaroo.blogspot.com, www.propublica.org, www.kahlfan.blogspot.com, www.fractual.co.za, www.damascuscitizens.org, www.gaslandthemovie.com.