INSIGHT - Water, Wealth and Whites - S.Africa's Potent Anti-Fracking Mix

Shale really made the headlines three years later, when Shell applied for an exploration licence covering more than 95,000 square kilometres, almost a quarter of the Karoo.

An outcry from farmers and landowners including Rupert ensued, prompting the government to freeze all new and existing applications while it assessed the risks and rewards of allowing exploration and ultimately production to go ahead.

During that time, the pro-fracking lobby, led by Shell, has laid out its stall.

Its key argument is that technically recoverable gas reserves, estimated by the U.S. Energy Information Administration at 390 trillion cubic feet (tcf), could transform an economy that has always been a big oil and gas importer.

The estimate gives South Africa the world's eighth biggest shale reserves, with nearly two-thirds the deposits estimated in the United States.

A Shell-commissioned study by Cape Town-based consultancy Econometrix suggests extracting 50 tcf, or 12.8 percent of potential reserves, would add $20 billion or 0.5 percent of GDP to the economy every year for 25 years and create 700,000 jobs.

With an election in six months, that argument has gained traction, especially as the ruling ANC is struggling to come up with answers for the millions of impoverished black citizens for whom life has changed little in the two decades since apartheid.


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