Madam Deputy Speaker, hon members, noting what the hon Minister has said, the UCDP approaches this matter with great circumspection. South Africa has a problem of subterranean water already and it is common knowledge that shale gas extraction requires significant amounts of water. It is reported that to carry out fracturing operations on a six-well pad takes between 54 and 174 million litres of water and that impacts on climate change and exacerbates the problem.
The noise caused by the traffic at the construction of each well will require between 4 300 to 6 500 trucks. This will have an impact on roads and traffic in the locality of the shale gas. During fracking millions of litres of water, sand and numerous chemicals -most of which are toxic - are pumped into boreholes at high pressure to release natural gas trapped in layers of underground rock.
In the USA, where fracking has been used extensively, there are hundreds of documented cases of this process resulting in catastrophic pollution of drinking water; air pollution; health concerns for humans and animals. The envisaged area for fracking is already extremely water-stressed and cannot afford any water to be either wasted or contaminated by fracking processes. We are concerned, to what extent, as the Minister indicated, does the Square Kilometre Array, SKA, which is hosted jointly with Australia, will be affected.
Perhaps government can take advice from an expert, Esme Senekal, who said:
This is the last piece of holy nature in this country. No money is worth this. You can't replace pristine nature with money.
If only government could please also take note of this, in terms of all that has been said. I thank you.