/ 7 April 2011

The dirty oil touch

I was fortunate enough to win a writing grant at the age of 23. After paying off my student loans I cast around for an investment. It was a big word and I was a big girl, ready to take on the world. Cue the announcement of a local oil company’s BEE shares a while later. I put a rather large sum down.

A few years later, the shares are worth far less than my original investment. And my new-found moral reservations around big oil and the deepening energy crisis we’re facing is enough to make me look back and go: what the hell was I thinking?

One way or another, big oil companies will screw you over.

But as oil supplies run dry, the trillion-dollar industry has looked for other avenues to exploit. And no, it’s nothing as readily available as sunshine or wind. It is natural gas, dubbed “clean” in a classic case of saying what people want to hear and not at all what you mean.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves drilling down into the earth and forcing open rock to release gasses trapped inside. Thousands of litres of water are used on a typical well, along with hundreds of different chemicals. Disposing of the waste water after the process, which is highly toxic, is one of the biggest problems.

It’s a gas
I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know much about fracking till a politely-worded invitation from Shell to visit their gas operations in the US landed in my inbox, following “much media interest in unconventional gas in South Africa following our license applications in the Karoo”.

The global oil giant spearheading the venture is now on a charm offensive.

The big guns at Shell have held press conferences all over the country in a bid to get their Karoo fracking operation off the ground by 2013. They intend exploring three areas making up 90 000km² in the Karoo for gas deposits in shale rock, in an area and country where water security is already a great cause for concern. Yet they are unable to guarantee that our water supplies won’t be affected. “Never say never,” said Graham Tiley, general manager of new venture executions at Shell, at the Johannesburg press conference.

Neither can they disclose the full list of chemicals being pumped at high pressure underground, apparently because it changes from site to site. This obfuscation is reminiscent of the dire recent history of fracking in the US, which has seen ground wells explode, household water supplies infected and endless court cases that deliver very little justice.

In Gasland, the Oscar-nominated and Sundance winning documentary on fracking in the US, the disturbing image of tap and river water being set on fire is shown repeatedly. Critics in the industry have slammed the producers of the film, saying that in many cases the water is flammable because of naturally occurring gas in the area, and has nothing to do with fracking. They’re probably right — for a minority of cases. The rest will have a long, pointless and poverty-inducing battle in court to prove otherwise.

Prove it
While Shell promises “full compensation to any landowner with documented direct negative impact or loss on their land as a result of our activities”, one local commentator points out: “Even if the chemicals found in tap water were identical to the fracking cocktail, how can anyone prove causation between the two without looking underground? And documenting it? It would be like trying to find someone who farted in a crowd, and spending millions of dollars on it.”

In direct contrast to Shell’s clean and slick PR campaign around fracking is the reality of the operations. Have I seen an actual hydraulic drill? No. The ones Shell is offering to take me to on its media jaunt are “world-class”. They are probably a far cry from the hastily thrown together rigs that dominate the American landscape shown in Gasland. The narrator notes they look like the first cars made: zero safety mechanisms.

Pits of waste water lie open to the air. Sometimes they’re sprayed into the sun, to aid evaporation. Acid rain anyone? Numerous cases are shown of toxic water finding its way into rivers and drinking sources.

In Pennsylvania this time last year one company was banned from the state after an investigation found they had allowed combustible gas to escape into the region’s groundwater supplies.

A well blowout in the same state in June 2010 sent more than 132 489 litres of hydraulic fracturing fluids into the air and on to the surrounding landscape in a forested area.

Health issues
Remember, while we don’t know exactly what the chemicals being released are, a number have been identified as carcinogens as well as endocrine disruptors, which interrupts hormones and glands in the body that control development, growth, reproduction and behaviour in animals and humans. Gasland showed flammable gas bubbling up in rivers, dead birds and rabbits, and several instances of residents near the wells suffering severe health problems including constant headaches, swelling, loss of smell and taste, and body pain.

I won’t get to meet any of these people if I go on Shell’s PR jaunt. I will meet experts who will discuss air and water quality, wildlife monitoring and mitigation and technology, “including directional drilling to minimise our footprint and catalyst technology to reduce air emissions”. And I’m sure safety regulations have now been put in place.

And that’s why I’ll be sending someone far more informed than I to ask the hard questions. Because the little that I know is not enough, and we definitely don’t need anymore hot air on the subject.

But thankfully we have been forewarned. Like my 23-year-old self, the US flirted with big oil’s latest venture naively. That experience is invaluable to us and we can’t let it go to waste. We must use all the resources we have to understand what is being brought into our country, and stop it if needs be.

For more information on fracking in the Karoo, and to sign a petition against it, go here. You can also join the Facebook group here.

  • You can usually read Verashni’s column every Monday here, and follow her on Twitter here.