Nigeria Content Online

There are some
words that those who develop dictionary software appear somewhat slow
to catch up on. One of such words is ‘fracking’. While the word is
still kept on the fringes of everyday discourse, the process it
describes is already pitting citizens against corporate power in North
America, Europe, and in Africa.

As the sound of the
name suggests, fracking has to do with fracturing. The New American
Oxford dictionary defines fracture as “the cracking or breaking of a
hard object or material … a crack or break in a hard object or
material, typically a bone or a body of rock…the physical appearance of
a freshly broken rock or mineral, esp. as regards the shape of the
surface.”

Fracking has
already raised serious problems in the United States and is being
questioned and resisted elsewhere. The nearest flash point is the
resistance to Shell in their efforts to engage in fracking in the
Karoo, South Africa. The community resistance in South Africa is
especially interesting in the sense that Shell has been confronted
there by their Nemesis: Ogoni activists displaced by their activities
in Nigeria.

In the case of the
plan by Shell for fracking in South Africa, they plan to bore holes 5
kilometres down into the belly of the earth in order to extract gas
trapped in a layer of shale stones. This is another signal that the age
of cheap oil is over.

Fossil fuels are
being sought for in increasingly less accessible locations such as
deep-water locations and in locations previously considered off limits
to extractive activities. As someone said, some of the processes can be
likened to a “societal scraping of the barrel.”

This process is not
exactly new, as it has been going on in the U.S.A. for decades,
according to some records. The causes of current anxieties are
primarily two-fold. Companies involved in this business have not
released the names and quantities of all the chemicals they use in the
fracking processes.

Secondly, the
process uses huge amounts of water, a serious concern in a season of
water scarcity. After pumping in huge volumes of water, about half of
this water is pumped out and the bubbles or gas are removed. The
wastewater with all its highly toxic dregs is then disposed of. The
question is whether this is handled in a manner that assures of safety.

According to the
experts, Shell’s “proposed exploration will apparently entail drilling
8 boreholes in each precinct (i.e. 24 boreholes in total) of up to 5
kilometre depth over a three-year period, extendable to nine years.

It appears that
each well will need between 0.3 million and 6 million litres of water
(i.e. a scenario of between 7.2 million and 144 million litres of water
required). Shell has been extremely vague as to its anticipated source
of water, with no concrete indication being given in the draft EMP or
in the public consultation meetings as to where the multinational
intends to source the requisite water from.”

While some people
argue that there are yet to be analyses showing actual water
contaminations related to chemicals used in fracking, there are several
confirming water contamination due to fracking processes.

For one, some of
the chemicals used in the process are known as carcinogens. The US
Environmental Protection Agency is examining the potential impacts on
drinking water of the various stages in the hydraulic fracturing
process. Such stages include when drillers mix water with chemicals and
sand and inject the fluid into wells in order to release oil or natural
gas.

Some 46 House of
Representative Democrats sent a letter to the Secretary of Interior in
which they stated, “communities across America have seen their water
contaminated by the chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process.”

Other concerns over
fracking plans have been raised in Canada and France. A report from the
Tyndall Centre in the United Kingdom, and an enquiry by the House of
Commons, has trailed the fracking business in that country.

The Tyndall Report
found a paucity of information on which to base serious analysis “of
how shale gas could impact on GHG emissions and what environmental and
health impacts its extraction may have; that there is a clear risk of
contamination of groundwater from shale gas extraction.”

Fracking folks have
enjoyed exclusion from regulation in the USA for years and are very
reluctant to accept accountability today. With Barack Obama’s intent to
accelerate the weaning of his country from heavy reliance on crude oil
imports, the shift to fracking seems good to some investors,
irrespective of its highly toxic and water-guzzling nature.

The exportation of
that anti-regulation operational latitude to other lands is meeting
serious resistance. The people of Karoo are basing their resistance,
among other things, on the indelible footprints that Shell’s operations
etched into the hearts, veins, and blood of the Ogoni.

The linkage between
the Ogoni and the Karoo deserves an applause as ordinary people rise up
to ask to know “what the frack is going on” and link hands across
political boundaries to globalise the struggle and hope for the
security of humankind in a globalised world.