Farmers push back against Highveld gas-drilling exploration plan

Thousands of lesser flamingos stop over at the Chrisiesmeer lakes and pans during summer. (Photo: Peter Borradaile)

18 Sep 2024

Farmers in the Mpumalanga Highveld are resisting a plan to drill the area in search of gas. One farmer warned, ‘When the wetlands and pans have been polluted and nothing will grow here any more, it will be too late. No one will remember that some old man with white hair like me warned against this project… But someone needs to stand up, today, and say that this is wrong.’

Farmers are banding together to resist a major gas exploration venture covering a quarter of a million hectares, deep below some of the most fertile soils of the Mpumalanga Highveld.

This comes after Rhino Oil and Gas Exploration South Africa (Rogesa) announced plans to drill up to 20 gas exploration wells to depths of a kilometre or more on farming land south of Ermelo.

Rogesa says it is targeting “biogenic” (methane) gas, helium and geological hydrogen within government Exploration Block 379. This is a 250,000-hectare chunk of land in southern Mpumalanga that includes the towns of Ermelo, Amersfoort, Chrissiesmeer, Hendrina and Carolina, as well as nearly 1,500 farms and other properties.

highveld gas drilling The blue line shows the boundaries of the entire gas exploration area in southern Mpumalanga. The light brown area below Ermelo has been earmarked for up to 20 initial exploration wells. (Source: SLR scoping report)

Local beef farmer Kerneels Jansen van Rensburg, one of the many Mpumalanga farmers pushing back against the exploration venture, says the rivers running through his farm are already heavily polluted by untreated human excreta flows from the dysfunctional Ermelo sewage treatment works.

As a result, Van Rensburg has been forced to drill several boreholes to water his cattle and irrigate the fields.

“Maybe gas exploration is not quite as bad as open-cast coal mining – but I’m already totally dependent on groundwater. If this underground gas drilling goes ahead, there is no guarantee against hydrocarbon and acidic pollution of all our water (groundwater and surface water).

“I’m asking myself: Why aren’t these people looking for gas underneath all the abandoned coal mining land, where the ground is now barren because it has never been rehabilitated?”

highveld gas drilling Beef farmer Kerneels Jansen van Rensburg fears that gas test wells could pollute underground water on his land. (Photo: Tony Carnie)

He suggests that drilling below abandoned and unrehabilitated coal fields would make more sense than risking the future of so many productive farms.

“Are they going to frack? Will we end up with 10,000 gas wells scattered all over Mpumalanga?”

According to SLR, the appointed environmental consultants: “Rhino Oil and Gas has publicly confirmed that their corporate strategy will not be exploring for shale oil or gas and therefore will not use hydraulic fracturing as part of their planned exploration or potential future production.”

In a letter attached to the environmental scoping documents, Rogesa director Travis Smithard and Rhino Holdings SCSp Limited director Cor Timmermans declare that they have “no ambition or interest” in shale gas exploration or hydraulic fracturing (fracking) – a controversial method of extracting gas by blasting and fracturing underground rock formations with high-pressure water, sand and chemicals.

Read more: Minister Mantashe’s seismic quest to explore the Karoo Basin for oil and gas reserves

In some parts of the United States, tap water has been polluted by methane gas and other contaminants entering underground supplies in the vicinity of shale gas fracking operations.

Smithard and Timmermans state that: “Technically, we believe that there is no benefit to hydraulic fracturing” and that low-pressure gas deposits would be hard to monetise.

Therefore, they were “excited to play a role in South Africa’s transition towards affordable and reliable low-carbon energy, while contributing to the economic development of communities and protecting the environments in which we are privileged to operate”.

highveld gas drilling Rogesa boss Travis Smithard. (Photo: Linkedin)

But Van Rensburg says he is not buying this “promise”, noting that Rogesa is just an exploration company.

“Once they find oil or gas, they sell the rights to someone else (so any pledges by the exploration company would not be binding on a separate gas production company).”

Koos Davel, a civil engineering consultant who specialises in mine waste rehabilitation, is also taking Rogesa’s “smooth talk” with a pinch of salt.

Davel has been commissioned to provide technical advice to the newly established Highveld Farmers Mining Pressure Group.

“Rhino say they will be drilling down to about 1,200m to target gas that has permeated down into the sandstone. But gas is lighter than air. So how could gas permeate downwards? It just doesn’t make sense to me. There are just so many anomalies in what the consultants have told us.”

For example, he said, representatives of the gas exploration group told farmers that they would use a very narrow diameter test well to sample underground rock formations.

However, with such a narrow diameter well, the surface area for sampling tests was unlikely to be large enough to gather meaningful data, he argues.

highveld gas drilling An example of a gas drill rig. (Source: SLR scoping report)

Davel says he remains suspicious that the exploration company will resort to underground fracking to stimulate gas flows, despite the company’s pledge not to frack.

“And if they do frack, no one will know until many years later, when the groundwater has already been polluted. Who will be on-site to police what happens with 20 isolated wells scattered over such a large area? I think their ‘no fracking pledge’ is just nonsense.

“When the wetlands and pans have been polluted and nothing will grow here any more, it will be too late. No one will remember that some old man with white hair like me warned against this project… But someone needs to stand up, today, and say that this is wrong.”

Daily Maverick sent questions about the project to Rogesa on 13 September but has received no answers. Smithard said he was attending a series of meetings in London and would only be in a position to respond after returning to Cape Town on 20 September.

A further point of concern for farmers and other interest groups is that SLR and Rogesa have stated that initial exploration will be confined to a smaller area of land south of Ermelo – not the entire ER 379 exploration block which takes in the environmentally sensitive Chrissiesmeer Lake District – a network of around 270 interconnected lakes and pans which support a wide variety of waterbirds such as flamingo, cranes and other species.

highveld gas drilling Thousands of lesser flamingos stop over at the Chrisiesmeer lakes and pans during summer. (Photo: Peter Borradaile)

According to the SLR scoping report: “Should initial exploration within the current EIA extent identify a viable natural gas resource, Rhino will then apply for a separate environmental authorisation to undertake exploration within the remainder of the ER area not assessed as part of this EIA.”

However, several residents fear that Rogesa has deliberately adopted an incremental approvals strategy to dampen wider controversy and community pushback. Some also query whether there are sufficient legal safeguards in place to prevent Rogesa from exploring elsewhere in the 250,000ha block after obtaining initial authorisation from the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy.

Rogesa has previously lodged oil and gas exploration bids over large sections of the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal.

During a round of public consultation meetings in the KZN Midlands in 2015, the company received a hot reception from local farmers, schoolchildren, landowners and other public interest groups.

The objectors plastered the meeting venues with placards, some of which called on Rhino to “frack off”. Matthew Hemming, an environmental consultant for the gas and oil company, came out of one meeting to find the tyres of his vehicle had been slashed.

Adriaan Groenewald, a member of the new Mpumalanga farmers’ pressure group who attended a public consultation meeting with SLR and Rogesa officials in Ermelo on September 13, said:

“I got the feeling that there was a lot of smooth talk. The real matters of concern to us were smoothly evaded. The other problem is that the departments of agriculture and water were nowhere to be seen (at the Ermelo consultation meeting).

“We need to get the top brass involved to assist us with the dilemmas we’re facing... As we say in Afrikaans: ‘Hulle skitter in hulle afwesigheid’ (they shine in their absence).” DM

To register as an interested or affected party and receive more details about the project, contact Theo Wicks or GP Kriel of SLR by email [email protected]

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