Karoo attorney responds to Petroleum Agency CEO’s interview
BizNews community member Mr Derek Light:
Dear Mr Hogg
Your interview with Dr Masangane was meaningful.
With greater certainty, it will be a step towards resolving this uncertainty, and subject of course to drilling.
We are pleased that she was able to clarify the nature of the US estimates / models and that they were the product of desk-top studies of existing data and are not accurate.
She also confirmed our advices to you on the issues relating to the ongoing research being performed by PASA and other institutions with some detail and we await the outcome of that research with interest.
She also confirmed that there will be no certainty on viable reserves (whatever the extent thereof) until drilling has been performed.
Significantly, the drilling that has been done to date in this process reveals no gas reserves. Perhaps when the further research she alluded to has been performed and the so-called "sweet spots" identified
Masangane confirmed the process as we did, but is incorrect on the state of the legislative framework. The Regulations published in 2022 were in draft form, published for comment, and have yet to be promulgated.
You erred in putting to her that I had said that these Regulations would be challenged. What I did say is that if they were inadequate or unlawful we would challenge that on Review to the High Court.
We do not launch Court challenges lightly and certainly not on "ideological" grounds.
Had landowners not opposed the pending applications and raised the concerns on the state of knowledge and legal framework in 2009 – 2011, the current risk averse process aimed at augmenting knowledge through credible research and the development of the legal framework to properly regulate "fracking" would not have occurred. The delays occasioned in the process were necessary.
Regards
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