Editor's Note

The latest of two moratoriums imposed by Minister of Mineral Resources Susan Shabangu on the use of the fracking (hydraulic fracturing) technique to explore for natural gas expires in February. At this stage, there is no indication which way she will go on the issue, but the latest developments surrounding this issue globally clearly call for extreme caution.

At the end of last year, a report by the United States Environmental Protection Agency found, after a study over three years, that fracking in Wyoming was the likely source of contamination of groundwater. Absolute conclusive proof of contamination will remain extremely difficult to obtain, but the indications are strong enough that the burden of proof – of non-contamination – should rather shift to those commercial interests that seek permission to make use of fracking.

Another, perhaps even more serious, reason extreme caution should be the order of the day came to the fore last year: the probable link between fracking and earthquakes in both the United Kingdom and the United States.

The UK’s sole operational fracking site, near Blackpool, was suspended in June following complaints from locals about two earthquakes in April and May. The subsequent report into the seismic activity and fracking concluded in December that it is “highly probable” there was a connection.

In the US, a study by the University of Memphis into earthquakes in an area where it was unknown before, has concluded that there was “a plausible relationship between the injection wells and the earthquakes” after a previously unknown fault system was discovered.

There has been much hype about economic and related benefits such as employment opportunities offered by the development of natural gas resources. But the responsible authorities should be careful about information that is often crowded out by the hype.

For instance, it is highly disturbing that as long ago as 1990, a US geological survey report found that “injection of fluid into deep wells has triggered documented earthquakes” in Colorado, Texas, New York, New Mexico, Nebraska and Ohio. It highlighted more than 70 quakes in July 1987 in Ashtabula, Ohio, about a kilometre from the bottom of a hazardous-waste disposal well that had been in operation for only a year. There had been no other known earthquakes within 30km since 1857, the report added.

There are strong arguments against developing domestic natural gas resources. Natural gas is cleaner burning than other hydrocarbons it would displace, such as oil and coal. Increased domestic capacity lessens reliance on unstable foreign sources of energy.

But the Wyoming and Blackpool experiences suggest there is no reason to be blithely confident that the widespread injection of contaminants into the earth poses no risk. Prudence requires a complete understanding of the potential risks and benefits of fracking.

They raise questions about whether enough is known about the practice to ignore risks in the name of jobs and domestic energy independence. Fracking, and the entire process of shale gas extraction, is probably not the solution to our energy challenges; instead, it is scraping the bottom of the geological barrel, bringing unacceptable health, climate and environmental consequences while delaying and distracting us from developing sustainable renewable energy sources.

Existing scientific understanding is inadequate for really responsible risk management. The environmental and health consequences of shale gas drilling are difficult to measure, but pervasive and potentially irreversible. The chemical mixture in fracking fluid is only one of many sources of environmental contamination; abandoned capped wells, after economic production ends, will be hazards for millennia to come – far beyond all human experience with the durability of concrete and steel.

Piet Coetzer