Environmental activists are questioning last month's approval of exploration licences that could pave the way for large-scale fracking across South Africa.
Five applications to prospect on land across KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, the Free State and North West were approved in late September by the Petroleum Agency of South Africa - possibly opening up 2.4 million hectares of land for companies to explore for subterranean shale gas.
Environmentalists said they were assessing their options, among which are appeals to the courts to halt the prospecting."The phased development of an onshore gas pipeline network therefore forms part of the infrastructure envisaged as an enabler for the offshore oil and gas exploration, and has the potential to unlock further possibilities for the growth of the gas industry in South Africa," it said.
Environmental consultant Judy Bell said the petroleum agency had probably "worked overtime" to grant the authorisations.
Bell said that the manner in which the five approvals had been granted was questionable.
"What is even odder is all the approvals are waiting on the granting of the exploration rights. I thought they had to have a right when they applied for environmental authorisation. Curiouser and curiouser," she said.
Exploration rights and environmental authorisation are governed by two separate pieces of legislation, both overseen by the Department of Mineral Resources.
Months over deadline
Sam Chademana, of the environmental lobby group groundWork, said that the minister of mineral resources was required to either grant or deny applications within 107 days of receiving them.
"All these authorisations are well over 107 days old; some are even months over the deadline. For those of us pushing back on this, the government wants to work outside the law."
He said that the wholesale granting of applications was dubious.
"There are no strong grounds as to why all these authorisations would be granted in one day. There is a lot of speculation and there is a sinister agenda behind it and we can't explain it. More than that I can't say.
"All these applications were submitted months apart but were all authorised on one day. We are beginning to think someone has been captured to make this decision," Chademana said...