The newly-appointed minister of forestry, fisheries and the environment,Willie Aucamp, has extended the public comment period for South Africa’s proposed environmental regulations governing commercialfracking. On 7 November, shortly before his dismissal, former environment ministerDion Georgeopened a 30-day window for public comment ondraft regulationsfor exploring and producing onshore petroleum resources requiring hydraulic fracturing. The draft regulations set out how fracking would be authorised, monitored and restricted.
Separate regulations are expected to be gazetted by the water and sanitation minister. On 1 December, Aucampannounced in theGovernment Gazettethat the comment period had now been extended to 13 February 2026. South Africa first imposed a fracking moratorium in 2011 after public outcry and litigation from environmental groups alarmed by risks to the arid and fragile Karoo Basin.
That moratorium is now ostensibly lifted. “Once those regulations [published by George] are gazetted, I lift the moratorium,” Mineral and Petroleum Resources MinisterGwede Mantashe toldReutersin October. “The economy needs a growth trigger and oil and gas are those triggers.” In July, Mantashe told Parliament that “mining can’t be killed for the sake of fresh air” as he championed the revival of Karoo shale gas,News24reported.
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South Africa, he said, would run short of gas by 2027, yet “our behaviour reflects a nation that doesn’t want to save itself … We talk about the drying up of gas resources in Mozambique but we don’t talk about our own resources.” At the time, the Climate Justice Coalitionrespondedthat, “the minister’s comments that ‘we can’t kill mining for fresh air are particularly provocative, especially given that fresh air is not a luxury that we can do without … We stand by our position that fracking is not a solution, it is a threat. “It contaminates water, releases methane which is a toxic and potent greenhouse gas that is80 times worsethan carbon dioxide over a 20 year period, causes earth tremors, and wreaks havoc on our ecosystems. Even more importantly, it violates the rights of the communities who live in the Karoo and depend on its land and water to survive.” In August 2024, the minister authorisedgeophysical surveysto investigate the subsurface geology of thesouth-central KarooBasin for oil and gas exploration.
For more than a decade, fracking has been one of South Africa’s most divisive environmental debates. Although the government briefly lifted the moratorium in 2012, progress stalled amid scientific uncertainty, regulatory gaps and fierce public opposition. Momentum has now returned. The draft regulations published by Aucamp’s department outline the full environmental framework for onshore shale-gas exploration and production.
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