Mpumalanga Highveld battle looms as farmers resist gas drilling plans

The government has granted permission to a local oil and gas exploration company to sink several test wells in a quarter-million-hectare chunk of the Mpumalanga Highveld, spurring strong opposition by farmers, renewable energy developers and other interest groups.

At this stage, the project by Rhino Oil and Gas Exploration South Africa (Rogesa) involves drilling up to 20 test wells to depths of roughly 1,000m below the surface of local cattle farms, maize and other crop lands close to the town of Ermelo.

While the initial environmental impacts are likely to be limited or localised, the real fear is that the broader landscape will be transformed on a major scale if Rhino discovers commercially viable quantities of gas and other hydrocarbons in a region already degraded by coal mining and Eskom power station pollution.

Rhino has provided a written “assurance” that it has no ambition to pursue shale gas and controversial rock fracturing technology (fracking) during its exploration venture. But this provides cold comfort to critics who note that Rhino is primarily an exploration company whose no-fracking pledges would not necessarily bind larger companies that bought out drilling or production rights at a later stage.

Rhino has also come under fire for seeking selective environmental approval for a limited portion of its overall exploration rights area, an increasingly common tactic by developers that is known as project-splitting or salami-slicing.

Read more: Farmers push back against Highveld gas-drilling exploration plan

Rhino’s exploration rights cover more than 750,000ha of Mpumalanga (which includes the sensitive Chrissiesmeer Lake District), yet the company has applied for environmental authorisation to drill only in a smaller 250,000ha section south of Ermelo at this stage.

Appeal

In a written appeal lodged by five local community groups, the Centre for Environmental Rights argues that environmental impact assessments (EIAs) cannot be conducted in a piecemeal fashion. This was because the law requires that the full potential impacts of development projects have to be assessed in advance to avoid underestimating the true impacts.

But SLR, a consulting group representing Rhino, counters that the company is focusing its initial exploration on areas with the highest potential for gas discovery. If Rhino decided to extend its drilling to other parts of the 750,000ha exploration block, further EIAs would have to be conducted.

During a previous gas exploration application in the Free State, the national farming federation AgriSA warned that Rhino’s exploration ventures in several parts of the country could set in motion “a sequence of events that may ultimately lead to a full-blown shale gas and fracking industry in South Africa”.

Rhino’s original parent company was founded by the late Patrick James Mulligan, a Dallas-based lawyer, big game hunter and member of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, along with South African former professional hunter Phillip Steyn (providing wildlife connections that may have shaped the oil company’s name).

Following Mulligan’s death and Steyn’s resignation as a director of Rhino, Rogesa has come under the leadership of Cape Town-based exploration geoscientist Travis Smithard and French geologist Gilles Pantanacce, a former exploration planner with the ExxonMobil group who has also been credited with recent gas discoveries in the Orange Basin off the Namibian coastline.

London-based energy executive and former ExxonMobil adviser Suhel Hanif Mistry also had a stint as director of Rhino Resources until his resignation early last year.  

Back in Mpumalanga, local farmers and business owners under the umbrella of the Eastern Highveld Foundation have also lodged a written appeal calling for the revocation of Rhino’s exploration plan.

Leon van Rooyen, a farmer from Lothair, says foundation members fear that the water and land resources of thousands of farmers will be placed at risk due to the complex nature of underground rock aquifers affected by well drilling.

Lake Chrissiesmeer

“There is no other region of southern Africa with such a high density of perennial pans and lakes,” he says, noting that the land around Lake Chrissiesmeer was declared a protected area last year due to its unique features.

Though Lake Chrissiesmeer falls just outside the current gas exploration area, Van Rooyen says that many of the pans are interlinked and also home to thousands of water birds and waders. The area has been proposed as a future Ramsar Wetland of International Importance.

Fellow farmer Jacobus Pieters argues that arable land and groundwater need to be protected and that South Africa’s long-term food security is more important than short-term fossil fuel extraction.

The farmers note that large areas of the province have been degraded by decades of coal extraction, leaving behind more than 780 derelict or ownerless mines and very few experienced officials to monitor or control further pollution of land and water.

Further objections

Further written objections to the gas exploration plan have come from several renewable energy industry developers, including the Seriti group and York Timbers, which owns more than 38,000ha of commercial timber plantations in the province.

York legal representative Terry Winstanley says: “The proposed exploration activities and future planned production activities are incompatible with York’s operations and if allowed to proceed, pose significant risks to its assets and operations.”

The Enertrag group says it has received environmental approvals to develop several new wind and solar energy plants on 26 local farms, known as the Camden Renewable Energy Cluster.

Seriti Green is also hoping to develop a new wind farm known as Phefumula Emoyeni One and says gas exploration in the same area creates a direct conflict in land use that threatens the viability of this and other renewable energy projects.

Amda developments is hoping to develop the new Zephyr wind farm about 5km southwest of Ermelo, while ABO Energy and the Sola groups also have other wind or solar projects in the pipeline.

SLR Consultants, which recently applied for a two-week time extension to respond to more than 300 pages of written objections on behalf of Rhino, has not yet posted its responses on its public participation website.

Daily Maverick also requested a copy of Rhino's appeal responses from SLR on 25 September, but did not receive a response.

However, in previously published responses, SLR said Rhino had applied for exclusive rights to explore for hydrocarbons and that there had been no consultation with it about any Section 53 applications by other groups.

(Section 53 of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act requires special “Ministerial Consent” for any land use that might affect the country’s mineral and petroleum resources.) 

Rhino therefore regarded any Section 53 applications granted after its permit approvals to be unlawful.

“Of course, as a committed energy project developer and team player in alleviating South Africa’s energy crisis, Rhino welcomes engagement with renewable energy developers, but will not tolerate any activity contravening its rights,” the company stated. DM