Shell, fracking and job creation

The degree to which Shell disgusts me is no secret, and this will not be the first time I write about the multinational. Take the worst aspects of capitalism, the most perverse levels of greed, and the highest disregard for nature: combine them and you have the Shell corporation.

Whereas in the past Shell has cropped up because of its tar sands operations and horror stories in the Niger delta, this time the corp is in the news because of its intention to exploit the Karoo. No doubt you will have heard about Shell’s application to explore for shale gas in South Africa, a process that has generated a lot of public concern.

Sadly it seems Shell’s application may well be approved. The CEO of Pasa, the agency responsible for making recommendations on whether to approve Shell’s application, has said it’s “likely” the application would be granted. He’s said the role of Pasa is “to see that environmental standards are upheld, but [also] to facilitate business”.

Frankly, even a five minute glance at Shell’s history will tell you that Shell’s definition of “environmental standards” is extremely flexible. Given the corp’s track record, you would have to be a complete imbecile to think that Shell gives the slightest about environmental standards — the very fact that they even applied to drill in an area like the Karoo ought to tell you that environmental concerns are not a factor here. It is simply a matter of cold, hard cash.

Shell has spent a good deal on an elaborate story trying to convince us that their application to drill is about creating a brighter future. It’s a story of a company concerned about our energy needs, a company that works “to benefit local communities“, and one that’s concerned about climate change. The story is that shale gas will be good for us in terms of development, good for the climate, and that fracking is safe for the environment. Like I said: an elaborate story.

Firstly there are many doubts about the environmental safety of fracking. The process involves highly toxic chemicals, some of them even radioactive. It also requires vast amounts of water, which is worrying given the scarcity of water in the Karoo. In addition, hydraulic fracturing is not a small-scale endeavour: it requires multiple sets of wells that have a limited life-span, meaning that new wells are constantly being drilled and ever greater areas are exploited. Now imagine the footprint created to service these wells — the roads, the trucking, the chemicals storage, the piping …

But even if the drilling was completely benign, there is still the question of whether shale gas really is a good energy source in terms of the climate. For instance, a recent peer-review study found that in terms of contributing to climate change “shale gas is worse than conventional gas and is, in fact, worse than coal and worse than oil”.

With this in mind, let’s look at the final part of the story; how fracking in the Karoo will develop the local community through job creation. It’s the argument that most often gets hauled out in defence of these sorts of projects, the coup de grace — who could possibly argue with development and job creation?

The assumption is that as a developing country with huge levels of unemployment, we should be jumping at the opportunity to create new markets and employ more people. Don’t get me wrong here: I am all for sustainable job creation. But this industry is not the way to do it. Fracking is a huge potential contributor to climate change, and it poses a range of other environmental risks to ecosystems in the Karoo. It was not on a whim that a moratorium on fracking was imposed in the state of New York in the United States.

If job creation trumps all else, then there are many markets we ought to be OK with, many jobs we should be happy people have regardless of their potential consequences — the narcotics industry is an extreme example. It provides many people with jobs and makes a massive annual turnover. Sure it wrecks lives, and leads to crime and corruption, but it provides jobs, remember. The point is that we are not OK with the narcotics industry and we’d rather people didn’t make their living by pushing drugs.

Job creation is not a silver bullet, there are many other aspects that have to be taken into account, and in the case of fracking, those aspects are crucially important. This is not the space we should be creating jobs in. Fossil fuel industries are inherently unsustainable, and so are the jobs they provide. As a country we should be focusing on creating jobs in areas that will really benefit communities — and that necessarily means the environment, too.

Oh, and let’s not forget that it’s Shell who’s applied to drill in the Karoo — that really is the final nail in the coffin. Man, I really loathe that corporation.