03 April 2012 | ANDREW KENNY

South Africa stands before a possible energy revolution. Deep below the surface of the Karoo there might be an energy source big enough to supply all of South Africa’s present electricity needs for more than three centuries.

About 5km below parts of the Karoo are rich seams of shale containing concentrated natural gas (mainly methane). How much is not known but some estimates suggest 500 TCF (trillion cubic feet). Mossgas, which operated for over 14 years, had one TCF.

In the past this gas could not be extracted, but a new technique known as “hydraulic fracturing” or “fracking” has allowed the US to extract vast amounts of gas, with huge benefits for her environment and economy.

The technique consists of drilling down to the shale and then horizontally through it, exploding small charges to fracture it, pumping water at pressure to keep the cracks open and then extracting the gas through pipes of concrete and steel.

Fracking uses small amounts of water and some innocuous chemicals (to keep the water flowing easily, prevent bacterial attack and so on).

Fracking takes place kilometres below the water table.

The environmental costs, by any scientific measure, seem tiny and the benefits seem huge.

Methane is a fuel for heating and for reliable, efficient combined cycle gas turbine power plants. Sasol can use it to make clean liquid fuels.

Yet rich greens attack fracking as if it were the work of the Devil. They never give good reasons.

They show an appalling propaganda film, Gasland, which is a pack of lies. In one scene a householder is shown setting fire to water coming out of his tap. This is blamed on fracking when everybody, including the producer, knew perfectly well that natural gas had been migrating naturally into the water courses decades before fracking started.

These same greens say nothing about the high environmental costs of wind turbines for bulk power, even though South Africa plans to build 8 400MW of this useless, environmentally damaging technology by 2030.

In China, whole communities are suffering disease from the devastating pollution from mining the rare earth used in the generators of wind turbines.

Wherever it has been tried, despite colossal amounts of money, wind power has proved hopelessly unreliable. It harms the environment and the economy.

It benefits only the ideology of a rich, green elite and the pockets of rich developers.