South Africa will end its ban on shale gas this month

South Africa will start looking for shale gas again as soon as new rules are made public, which should be this month, the energy resources minister said on Thursday.

Because of a public outcry and court action by environmental activists worried about the effects of hydraulic fracking in the ecologically sensitive Karoo region, the regulator was not allowed to handle any new applications for reconnaissance permits, exploration rights, or production rights. This ban was put in place in 2011.

A statement from after the cabinet earlier on Thursday said that the country’s environment minister had finished writing the rules for shale gas and they would be made public before the end of October.

“Once those rules are published, I will lift the ban,” Gwede Mantashe, Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, told Reuters. “The economy needs a growth trigger and oil and gas are those triggers.”

South Africa is trying to switch from polluting coal-fired power plants that provide most of its energy needs to gas-fired plants.

The rules on shale gas will help manage environmental and safety issues, like water problems, that come up with fracking in the mostly dry Karoo area.

The most developed economy on the continent, South Africa, gets its gas from Mozambique through pipes and needs new sources as the fields run out.

Richards Bay is being turned into the country’s first liquefied natural gas supply terminal.

According to the Petroleum Agency of South Africa, the Karoo Basin has about 209 trillion cubic feet of shale gas resources that can be properly recovered.

Geologists at the University of Johannesburg did a study in 2017 that said the amount was between 13 and 390 tcf, with most likely being close to the lower end of that range.