Drilling threatens jewel of the Kalahari

Save the Okavango Coalition Recon Africa, a ‘small’ oil and gas company staffed by some of the most well-known oil and gas professionals in the business, has extensive ties to Exxon and Halliburton. These people include Nick Steinsberger, the so-called ‘Father of Fracking’, who is in charge of the drilling operation in Namibia.The company said it is exploring Namibia and Botswana, hoping to find oil that naturally flows, called conventional drilling. However, they have made mention of unconventional drilling, frac stimulations (fracking) and drilling ‘hundreds of wells’ in their investor updates. Despite the recent statement by their public relations department that they will in fact not be fracking, it seems that some potential investors are still under the impression that this is a possibility.A Haywood report from 21 December 2020 still places value on ‘unconventional oil’ in the Kavango Basin. Unconventional usually means fracking.While ReconAfrica keeps pointing out that their activities are not in the actual delta, there’s no acknowledgement of the fact that drilling is currently taking place in the Omataku riverbed, which feeds the Okavango Delta with water during heavy rainfall, as is happening at the moment. The delta is landlocked, which means that any oil spills or leaked persistent pollutants from the drilling operations will accumulate in its delicate ecosystem, causing untold harm to the environment and the people and animals who depend on it for survival.It is also the world’s largest protected Ramsar wetland.ReconAfrica’s licence area in Namibia extends for more than 200km along the banks of the Okavango River. Despite assurances from the company that they will not drill next to the river, their EIA allows them to drill anywhere in their licence area, including on the banks of the biggest river feeding directly into the Okavango Delta.Should ReconAfrica discover oil and gas and develop the hundreds of wells they have been selling to their investors, and each well takes at least five million litres of water, it is likely that the Okavango River system could be severely compromised by water loss of this extent. Job creationWon’t this create jobs in Namibia? Nowhere near the 98 000 sustainable jobs that tourism creates. Yes, Covid-19 has temporarily dented the tourism industry, but it will recover. Oil and gas developments permanently damage the environment with toxic pollutants and radiation, potentially poisoning the nearby communities, animals and crucial water supplies. If oil and gas are found, the financial gains will be temporary and as has been seen in other parts of the world, only for a select few. Most of the oil and gas jobs available during this kind of operation are for highly skilled foreign professionals, not local people.Communities that have experienced oil and gas development like this in the USA are left less well off after the oil is gone, and are saddled with the cost of cleaning up the mess that is left behind. For example, a local hardware shop could see massive orders from the oil company during the oil boom, leaving them bankrupt when the boom evaporates, which tends to happen overnight. This will leave businesses deeply in debt and municipal governments unable to cover their costs because they overspent during the oil boom years.This happens across the business sector in small towns and communities affected by oil and gas development. Once the oil rush is gone, and the local small businesses are bankrupt and the fabric of the community unravels, leaving polluted oil ghost towns behind, according to news agency Bloomberg. Serious concernBest practice is to require companies like ReconAfrica to pay an upfront deposit that will cover the cost of clean-up, but there’s no indication that this has been done in Namibia. The average cost of a well clean-up in the USA is US$250 000.In British Columbia, where ReconAfrica is headquartered, the estimated cost to the taxpayer of cleaning up wells that are left by companies like ReconAfrica is US$3 billion. Canada, with a lot of regulatory oversight, is battling to keep oil and gas companies from polluting the environment.This should be a serious concern for a country like Namibia which has less capacity to regulate polluters like these.It’s unlikely that this is good news for the Namibian economy because ReconAfrica owns 90% of revenue from the drilling - the remaining 10% is owned by Namcor, Namibia’s petroleum parastatal. In neighbouring Botswana, ReconAfrica claims to own 100% of the produced oil from their licence. Experience from other countries is that the large injections of money from an oil boom tend to benefit powerful individuals and foreign companies, while leaving the environmental costs to be borne by taxpayers and local communities.Many of the executives at ReconAfrica helped create the modern American fracking boom, and now they have set their sights on Namibia and Botswana.In 2020, zombie oil companies are US$54 billion dollars in debt in the USA, according to Forbes.America’s largest oil and gas company, Exxon, has fired much of its staff after losing half of its revenue in the past year. These oil company bankruptcies have left a legacy of radioactive air and water, orphaned wells, divided communities and pollution that can probably never be cleaned up.Renewable energy giant NextEra Energy has become America’s largest energy company, overtaking oil for the first time in 120 years.Discrepancies Despite numerous requests, ReconAfrica has not produced the important list of interested and affected parties whom they consulted with before being granted their environmental clearance certificate to drill in Namibia. This list is vital to understanding the community engagement process guaranteed to Namibians under the Environmental Management Act. Without this list, it is impossible to understand whether or not ReconAfrica has consulted local communities at all before their drilling permit was issued. There is also no evidence to suggest that any baseline water testing studies were carried out by the company or the environmental assessment practitioner, which are vital to determine if ReconAfrica’s drilling plan pollutes the local groundwater. Article 95 in the Namibian Constitution states: The State shall actively promote and maintain the welfare of the people by adopting, inter alia, policies aimed at: Maintenance of ecosystems, essential ecological processes and biological diversity of Namibia and utilisation of living natural resources on a sustainable basis for the benefit of all Namibians, both present and future; in particular, the government shall provide measures against the dumping or recycling of foreign nuclear and toxic waste on Namibian territory.Given the lack of public participation, the lack of quality environmental assessment, and the real fears of water and air pollution, it certainly seems possible that ReconAfrica’s drilling programme is in contravention of the constitution.

Drilling threatens jewel of the Kalahari

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Namibian Sun 2025-05-06

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Drilling threatens jewel of the Kalahari

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Namibian Sun 2025-05-06

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