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you will gain trust if you remove the politics and<br />
invest in the science to do the research.<br />
People were concerned about water safety,<br />
a legitimate concern. The second concern was<br />
environmental pollution: what measures are you<br />
going to put in place to secure the environment?<br />
We could not provide answers at that time. While<br />
we were busy developing regulations based on<br />
other jurisdictions that were extracting shale gas as<br />
a benchmark, we did not have anything that was<br />
specific to South Africa, so the CGS was tasked to do<br />
this environmental baseline study.<br />
We needed to characterise shallow groundwater<br />
and establish what it would take to protect the<br />
water in those aquifers in the event that we were to<br />
proceed with shale gas extraction. We now have an<br />
answer to that question.<br />
The second question was, do we have gas? We<br />
have got gas. How much is still to be determined.<br />
Do you have an idea of the volume?<br />
If you look at our balance of payments, I think the<br />
largest chunk of it is the importation of crude oil.<br />
If we have the amount of shale gas that we think<br />
we have, this may have a huge impact on our<br />
national fiscus.<br />
Mossgas was opened on a motivation of one<br />
trillion cubic feet. The original projections in the<br />
Karoo were that we have 490tcf, a figure in which<br />
I don’t have much confidence. But even if we had<br />
20tcf, can you imagine what impact that would have?<br />
What new projects is CGS involved in?<br />
There was a huge excitement around 2013/14 with<br />
announcements being made around Operation<br />
Phakisa and the Blue Economy. This opened our<br />
eyes to a whole frontier economy right under our<br />
noses which we have not exploited optimally. There<br />
is some fishing, we have our ports and there was<br />
some excitement around petroleum exploration<br />
recently, but we have not even begun to look at the<br />
marine prospects.<br />
There is limited geological information so we<br />
have put together a very aggressive plan to map<br />
offshore. We have struck a partnership with the navy<br />
so that we can have a collaboration to leverage<br />
their vessels to fast-track the mapping. While they<br />
are moving around doing their work our gadgets<br />
Drilling for information near Beaufort West. A geoenvironmental<br />
baseline study for gas in the Karoo has<br />
been completed and the report is being compiled.<br />
will be mounted on their boats. That will help us to<br />
accelerate the mapping and help us to catch up.<br />
And you have your own vessel?<br />
We have recently launched one, but it is a small one<br />
that is only to do work near-shore in the interim. We<br />
have named it RV Nkosi after a world-class mineral<br />
separation technician who worked for CGS and who<br />
passed away in 2019. Research Vessel (R/V) Nkosi.<br />
Our team has been collecting data and this<br />
year’s weather has been much better than last year.<br />
I am comfortable with how it is going.<br />
Are there other projects relevant to the<br />
<strong>Western</strong> <strong>Cape</strong>?<br />
We are looking at numerous things, including geotourism.<br />
There is outstanding geoscience here. Our<br />
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WESTERN CAPE BUSINESS <strong>2022</strong>
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