A Texas-based exploration company, Rhino Resources, lodged an application to the Petroleum Agency of South Africa to explore for oil and gas in KwaZulu-Natal in the form of ‘fracking’.
Just outside Ladysmith, less than a kilometre from the last house and within the flood plains of the Qedusizi Dam, is the site selected for exploration.
‘Fracking’ is a process of injecting water under high pressure into rocks to force open existing fissures and extract oil and gas trapped inside.
This will be done on nearly 40 per cent of the land surface area in KwaZulu-Natal, which also includes Ladysmith, with the first exploration zones stretching from Ixopo in the south to Nkandla in the north, and in areas around Pietermaritzburg, Mooi River, Ladysmith and Colenso.
The company made an application to explore for oil and gas underneath a 1,500,000-hectare belt of land that includes 10,000 farms in the central parts of KwaZulu-Natal.
The proposed exploration area that is located within Emnambithi/Ladysmith Municipality is an area of approximately 77,490 hectares, extending from Ladysmith through Watersmeet and east of Besters.
Fracking raises major concerns around the pollution of surface and underground water supplies.
The KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union has also raised strong concerns about the potential impact on farming if oil and gas production went ahead. While a variety of reasons for their rejection were given, Rhino consultants insist that the early phase of the exploration would not involve any hydraulic rock fracturing (fracking).
Just because the Petroleum Agency of South Africa announced that it had accepted Rhino’s report, which allows the environmental impact assessment to continue, does not mean that the company has yet been given permission to explore the province for gas.
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