Exploration in Namibia , BEng (Hons), Pr Eng Resources Consultant, Risk-Based Solutions (RBS) CC

supporting infrastructure such as a pipeline, a refinery or a power station option will be evaluated with linkages to the technological requirements, national environmental, security, financial and all other applicable national regulations.

Overall, the process of hydrocarbons or any other resources exploration operations are very complex, long-term and extremely expensive and investors who participate in resources exploration operations are fully aware of the high risk involved and have the appetite for such high stakes that can also come with high rewards in an event of a commercial discovery. Unlike the opportunistic environmental messiahs who cherry-pick the clear high-quality exploration datasets, twists and falsely present it either deliberately or ignorantly just for the sole purpose of getting donations for personal, family and friends incomes drives.

4. Summary of Environmental Impacts of Onshore Oil and Gas Exploration

Overall, onshore oil and gas operations can be divided into airborne (aerial) and ground-based operations. Aerial survey covers the acquisition of aerial data sets such as gravity and magnetics. Ground-based oil and gas exploration operations involve the drilling of stratigraphic well, acquisition of seismic data, surface geochemical sampling, drilling of exploration well/s and in an event of a commercial discovery, the drilling of appraisal wells. To date, several airborne surveys and ground-based exploration operations have been successfully undertaken by various operators in northern Namibia in last ten (10) years covering the Petroleum Exploration License ( Fig.1) falling within the Nama, Etosha and the newly discovered Kavango Basins, to be confirmed.

Airborne surveys have no ground footprint and all the logistics are always centred around an existing airport / landing strip with key supporting infrastructures. However, with the introduction of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or drone-based technologies, geophysical airborne surveys can now be deployed and undertaken without the need for airport supporting infrastructure and with no environmental footprint.

Onshore seismic survey operation is a nonintrusive ground oil and gas exploration method used in validating the geologic sub model through imaging of the subsurface in the search for key geological structures that could hold oil or gas within a Sedimentary Basin. A seismic survey is conducted by creating an acoustic wave which is a seismic wave on the surface of the ground along a predetermined line, using an energy source (“Vibroseis” trucks). The receivers are typically geophones, which are like small microphones placed in the soil to measure the ground motion. The actual seismic survey operations have no major environmental impacts especially in areas where access for the survey trucks already exists. The survey usually uses existing roads and with the introduction of cableless systems and the smart Wi-Fi receivers which make it easier to deploy larger, denser and achieve longer offsets for deeper targets, ground seismic survey operations has become even more flexible to conduct even in sensitive environments. Newly developed processing algorithms are helping to find signal in the noise, extending the application of useful frequencies both lower and higher bands.

Ground motion caused by an onshore seismic survey vibration is generally barely perceivable. The further away you are from the vibrating truck, the less you would feel the vibration. Studies have shown that common household activities such as hammering a nail into a wall would cause more vibration to a house than a typical vibroseis truck operating in the area. Globally and based on a number of previous onshore 2D seismic surveys that have been conducted in Namibia including those undertaken in the Nama Basin near Maltahöhe in southern Namibia and more recently south of Nkurenkuru in Kavango West Region, onshore seismic survey can be used even in sensitive locations without damaging buildings or affecting any receiving environmental component.

Well drilling operations covering either stratigraphic, exploration or appraisal well/s form the pinnacle of validating the developed hydrocarbon model and all the associated sub models such as geophysical, geological, geochemical and petroleum systems boundary conditions. A standard single well site for onshore oil or gas drilling operation will typically affect a surface area ranging from 150m by 150m to 250m by 250m for multiple well drilling pads. The well site will typically hold the drilling rig and additional equipment along with supervisory accommodation and material storage. Once drilling is completed the affected area will be reclaimed to minimise surface disturbance.

The well design consists of those features and functional requirements of the well environment that make up the conduit between drilling rig on surface and the anticipated reservoir deep underground and incorporates casing design, drilling fluids, bit and tool selection, and drilling technique to manage drilling hazards. The size of an oil and gas exploration well (actual hole drilled) differs from well to well, but is generally around 12.5 to 90 centimetres wide and this is the footprint made into the ground. The well casing is the lining that is inserted between the edge of the well and the well itself that helps to structurally support the well. In a closed hole well, drilling cement is pumped into the drill pipes to the bottom of the well and then squeezed up the annulus between the pipe and the open borehole for stability, to separate and isolate different zones and to prevent groundwater contamination from seepage, etc.

The environmental footprint of any ground-based oil and gas exploration operations is often the temporary campsite (less than 90 days) which usually occupies an area ranging from 2 – 6 Ha (150m by 150m to 250m by 250m) depending on the size of the operations. Priority for establishment of an exploration camping faciality often focuses on the use of existing lodging facilities or camping grounds in the general area. In the absence of existing facilities in area, a campsite will always be carefully selected to avoid sensitive environments if any, and local communities and their properties. A campsite is often fully equipped with containerised accommodation and all related facilities and services. Following the completion of the operations the campsite area/s is cleared, cleaned and restored. The overall significance negative impacts posed by onshore surface exploration activities such as well drilling and seismic surveys are generally highly localised, temporally for the duration of the operations and of low significance without mitigations and negligible with mitigations. Such impacts may include: Limited and localised site physical disturbances, noise and dusts, air emission from combustion fuels from the vehicles, generators, and other equipment and solid and liquid waste management.

5. The Myth of Fracking in Namibia, the Opportunistic Drivers and Conclusions

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the unconventional process used to extract commercially /economically discovered oil or gas from sedimentary rocks that are highly compacted with poor permeability, therefore, poor connectivity of the pore spaces. It involves drilling a well into a targeted reservoir rock and pumping a highpressure mix of water, sand and chemicals in order to generate small fractures in the rock there by connecting pore spaces and allowing the oil or gas to flow toward a well and pump it out as part of oil or gas production process. Namibia has no onshore commercial gas or oil that has been discovered to date in any of the wells that have been drilled and yet alone a commercial discovery in a compacted sedimentary reservoir rock that would require the use of unconventional oil or gas production process (fracking). Those with passionate environmental anti-fracking sentiments must direct their energies and efforts to countries where hydraulic fracking activities are currently being conducted with fully fledged commercial operations contributing billions of united states dollars to the GDPs of these countries, why not go there, why? The only reason for having the so-called anti-fracking or oil and gas exploration movements in a region where there is zero commercial oil or gas discovered or production is because Africa presents an exceptional opportune for operating opportunistic shadows of environmental nonprofit movement as personal or family business niches and sources of incomes for personal, family and friends riding on the ignorance of the masses. The majority of the local people do not even know how money is made and distributed in these foreign funded non-profit cliques ridden entities and the local people and local environmental issues are just being used when donations are needed to fuel the movement.

The area wrongly being claimed as the fracking coverage over the entire Kavango West and East Regions is indeed nothing, other than a Degree Squares License Blocks that the Government has leased out at N$65 per km2 as per the provisions of the Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Act, 1991, (Act No. 2 of 1991). All impacts likely to be associated with the proposed field-based oil exploration activities such as the drilling of stratigraphic wells, seismic survey and exploration well drilling operations over a limited area of interest, will be localised and short lived for the duration of a given exploration activity.

Having worked in the most remote areas of both Kavango West and East Regions in the last five (5) years undertaking petroleum aerial gravity and magnetic surveys, ground seismic surveys and geochemical soil sampling for oil and gas feeding bacterial profiling operations, I have come across families who twice a week leave their woody and grassy homesteads in so called “sensitive environment” and walk for four (4) hours one way to reach the nearest public school where they could fetch water, came across homestead dilapidated to the state that makes your heart sink, came across many educated local people without jobs and with no prospects of emerging out the cycle of came across young people with no any other economic opportunity whatsoever except cattle herding, grass and wood harvesting, came across young people with HIV / AIDS and have stopped taking their antiretroviral therapy due to lack of food or could not reach the nearest clinic in the general area because it is just too far to reach on foot and I have driven through extreme sandy poor access tracks connecting majority of the villages, it is incomprehensible to see that those with no knowledge whatsoever about oil and gas exploration that could uplift the living standard of the local people and the nation as whole in an event of a commercial oil or gas discovery want see the current status core of underdevelopment and poverty prevailing in both the Kavango West and East Regions centred on inherited generational poverty. It is high time that Governments in Africa and especially Southern Africa, Namibia included move swiftly to regulate the emergence of opportunistic environmental clique movements because for one to choose the World-renowned Okavango Delta, Okavango River as well as the San People as the backdrop for personal fund-raising campaigns and drives for donations to the so called “non-profits” and for own personal, family and friends incomes, while the majority of Namibians in Kavango West and East where the true project is situated continue to languish in poverty and illiteracy is unacceptable drive that is aimed at sabotaging national development agendas through a perpetuation of entitlement, privileges, exclusivity, class and patronage based movements. The movements are now being funded by foreign actors and yet their own countries continue to emit tones of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere from fossil-based fuels economic development agendas. The advocacy space has become so crowded with environmental champions including opportunistic and conflicted foreigner entrants claiming to be well connected investment facilitators and with zero employment opportunity created for Namibians and now also volunteering to be champions of environmental protection in Namibia in order to curve their own donation-based lucrative business space unknown to many ordinary Namibians who are just being used to support movements that are enriching only a few privileged clique riding on the ignorance of the masses.