The newly-appointed minister of forestry, fisheries and the environment, Willie Aucamp, has extended the public comment period for South Africa’s proposed environmental regulations governing commercial fracking.
On 7 November, shortly before his dismissal, former environment minister Dion George opened a 30-day window for public comment on draft regulations for exploring and producing onshore petroleum resources requiring hydraulic fracturing. The draft regulations set out how fracking would be authorised, monitored and restricted. Separate regulations are expected to be gazetted by the water and sanitation minister.
On 1 December, Aucamp announced in the Government Gazette that the comment period had now been extended to 13 February 2026.
South Africa first imposed a fracking moratorium in 2011 after public outcry and litigation from environmental groups alarmed by risks to the arid and fragile Karoo Basin. That moratorium is now ostensibly lifted.
“Once those regulations [published by George] are gazetted, I lift the moratorium,” Mineral and Petroleum Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe told Reuters in October. “The economy needs a growth trigger and oil and gas are those triggers.”
In July, Mantashe told Parliament that “mining can’t be killed for the sake of fresh air” as he championed the revival of Karoo shale gas, News24 reported.
South Africa, he said, would run short of gas by 2027, yet “our behaviour reflects a nation that doesn’t want to save itself … We talk about the drying up of gas resources in Mozambique but we don’t talk about our own resources.”
At the time, the Climate Justice Coalition responded that, “the minister’s comments that ‘we can’t kill mining for fresh air are particularly provocative, especially given that fresh air is not a luxury that we can do without … We stand by our position that fracking is not a solution, it is a threat.
“It contaminates water, releases methane which is a toxic and potent greenhouse gas that is 80 times worse than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period, causes earth tremors, and wreaks havoc on our ecosystems. Even more importantly, it violates the rights of the communities who live in the Karoo and depend on its land and water to survive.”
In August 2024, the minister authorised geophysical surveys to investigate the subsurface geology of the south-central Karoo Basin for oil and gas exploration.
Fresh momentum
For more than a decade, fracking has been one of South Africa’s most divisive environmental debates. Although the government briefly lifted the moratorium in 2012, progress stalled amid scientific uncertainty, regulatory gaps and fierce public opposition.
Momentum has now returned. The draft regulations published by Aucamp’s department outline the full environmental framework for onshore shale-gas exploration and production.
They prescribe standards for environmental assessment, require baseline studies before exploration proceeds, and set conditions for continuous monitoring. The regulations also coordinate decision-making between regulators and define the minimum information required for environmental authorisation and water-use licences.
Several high-risk practices are prohibited. These include using local surface or groundwater in areas with less than 400 mm annual rainfall (except deep saline aquifers); disposing of untreated fracturing fluids or process water into rivers, onto land, to wastewater plants or underground; storing process water in pits or dams; dumping drill cuttings or sludge anywhere other than sealed above-ground tanks; reinjecting fluids underground; using specified chemical additives; and abstracting water from groundwater monitoring boreholes.
Exploration and production are also banned in heritage sites, protected areas and key astronomy zones linked to the Square Kilometre Array. Fracking is prohibited within 5km of government dams and waterworks, strategic water-source areas, towns or densely populated areas, and thermal or cold springs.
Some zones are restricted rather than prohibited — notably areas within 5 km of municipal wellfields and parts of the Karoo Central Astronomy Advantage Area. In these areas, fracking may proceed only if impacts can be avoided or adequately mitigated and with approval from the relevant custodial authority.
Highly contested, rejected
The government’s renewed shale-gas ambitions ignore unchanged geological risks, Clarens-based geologist Gideon Groenewald said.
“As an independent geologist, I see a revival of the idea of extracting gas and oil from the shale of the Karoo Supergroup through the patented (1952) methodology of ‘fracking’,” he said.
“It is important to understand that, since the decision to ban further exploration for gas and oil reserves was made in 2011, nothing in terms of the geology has changed. The reason for the banning of the extremely destructive methodology of exploiting the potential gas and oil reserves of South Africa is still as valid as 13 years ago.”
He cautioned that the regulatory burden now falls heavily on environmental assessment practitioners — individuals who, he argues, require deep expertise and impeccable track records to oversee such “highly risky environmental impact scenarios”.
Groenewald said he had “no doubt” that the individual appointed to restart environmental authorisations will have historic data at their disposal before reconsidering what he calls the “highly contested and rejected methodology” of shale-gas extraction.
He also warned about severe consequences for farmers already battling drought and groundwater scarcity.
“As a person who made my living from drilling for groundwater in the Karoo Supergroup, my heart goes out to the farmers in the Great Karoo … who now also have to contend with an influx of petroleum research teams with foreign cultures and social mannerisms that will change the geographical as well as the social landscape of the Karoo.”
He noted that the Karoo Supergroup covers nearly 200 000 km² — from East London to Laingsburg and through Kimberley, Johannesburg and Durban — meaning vast areas could be affected.
Drawing parallels with the legacy of gold mining on the Witwatersrand, Groenewald questioned whether “the omelette (oil and gas) is of more long-term value than the generations of future chickens (clean water)”.
Rearing its head – again
Jan Glazewski, a retired law professor from the University of Cape Town who participated in a study by the authoritative Academy of Science of South Africa (Assaf) on the technical readiness for the shale gas industry, referred to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR) Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) for shale gas development.
In particular, he referred to the CSIR’s thorough and in-depth study, which did not reject fracking but which imposed a number of caveats and conditions, should fracking go ahead. In his view, he doubted whether the government had the capacity or will to implement these.
Glazewski said he believed the matter was “dead and buried because those conditions made it impossible — now this thing has reared its head up again.
“… My big question is what about all these studies that have been done? Surely, they provide the basis for going forward. What they’re doing now, everyone is fiddling around commenting on the [latest] regulations but they must see this against the background of these comprehensive huge studies.”
Scientific assessments underline the risks
The CSIR’s multi-disciplinary SEA, commissioned by the government, assessed 15 technical domains — including hydrogeology, surface water, biodiversity, heritage, seismicity, waste, infrastructure and socio-economics — and produced an operational decision-making framework for government.
Among its findings: the Karoo contains shale formations with gas potential, but extraction poses high, long-lasting risks, especially to scarce groundwater, sensitive ecosystems and heritage resources. Water-management infrastructure and institutional capacity are insufficient to handle shale-gas demands, and baseline water-data gaps remain widespread.
Risks scale with intensity: small, tightly controlled exploration carries far lower risks than large-scale commercialisation. Groundwater pathways in parts of the Karoo are complex and poorly mapped, creating uncertainty about contamination routes and the longevity of impacts. Wastewater handling, sludge management and induced seismicity also remain significant concerns.
The SEA’s recommendations included rigorous baseline monitoring, strict water-use and waste-management controls, application of the decision-making framework to screen sites, and the designation of no-go or restricted zones — including protected areas, strategic water-source areas and astronomy zones. It urged a staged approach with strong oversight and transparent public participation.
The separate 2016 Assaf consensus report, produced with the South African Academy of Engineering, and commissioned by the department of science and technology, found that South Africa was not technically ready for shale-gas exploration or production. It identified major gaps in legislation, regulatory capacity, monitoring expertise, laboratory infrastructure, skills and baseline environmental data.
It called for a coherent legal framework, strong oversight, comprehensive multidisciplinary baseline studies, long-term monitoring and full alignment with the Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act — including a 30km no-fracking buffer around Square Kilometre Array sites.
Without robust scientific evidence, rigorous regulation and institutional readiness, the report warned, shale-gas development in the Karoo would pose unacceptable risks.
Public comment deadline extended as concerns raised about risks to fragile Karoo Basin
