SA must consider fracking!!!

South Africa is a large consumer of refined petroleum products and 65% of the country’s fuel consumption is satisfied by imported crude oil. According to the Department of Energy, for the month of February 2012, Saudi Arabia delivered the most crude oil onto South African shores, at 582,000 tonnes. Iran delivered the second highest volume, at 417,000 tonnes or 25% of SA’s total crude oil imports during that month. Save for SASOL’s coal-to-liquids programme, South Africa has no known crude oil reserves.

With the imminent Iranian oil sanctions imposed by the United State of America and the European Union, South Africa needs to find crude oil supplier alternatives to "fill" the void that will be left by Iran.  Nigeria and Angola seem to be the most logical options to replace Iran, especially given that both countries are already suppliers of crude to SA, albeit it at very small quantities at today’s levels. Together, Nigeria and Angola produce just over 4 million barrels of oil per day, as such, the two countries have the capacity to meet SA’s crude requirements. However, the concern with Nigeria and Angola is security of supply, due largely to geopolitical instability, especially in Nigeria’s oil producing area of the Delta Region.

US oil giant, ExxonMobil has made a big bet on fracking and in a recent interview in Fortune Magazine, the company’s CEO, Rex Tillerson, pointed out that ExxonMobil will pursue fracking aggressively while ensuring that no undue harm is done to the environment. More recently, Shell South Africa attracted attention when it announced plans to explore fracking in the Karoo region of South Africa. SASOL is already a major investor in fracking-related activities in North America. In my view, the South African government ought to explore an environmentally responsible way of using fracking techniques to exploit any available crude oil reserves, to ensure a measure of self-reliance as this relates to South Africa's current and future fuel consumption.

Our Politicians must show willingness to create effective government!! 

Who will fund the 2014 party elections campaigns?

Later this month, South Africa’s ruling party will stage its National Policy Conference ahead of the National Elective Conference due to take place in December. These two events, mark the start of the preparations for the national general elections due to take place in 2014.

Elections by their very nature involve campaigning and these campaigns require huge amounts of funding. Since the first democratic elections in 1994, there has been much debate as to who should fund party-political campaigns: should it be government (using tax-payer monies); should it be the private sector or indeed various forms of international funders, OR perhaps a combination of all the above?

In the US, where the 2012 Presidential Election campaign is in full swing, candidates who qualify based on a set criteria can apply for government funding for both their primaries and general election campaigns. However, those who accept such government funding are subject to a spending limit. It is this spending limit which has often driven many Presidential campaigners to prefer private funding of their campaigns as this comes with no limitations. It is a matter of record that during his 2008 Presidency, then Presidential Candidate Obama was able to raise in excess of US$700Mil from private donors.

It will be interesting to see which funding model the Independent Electoral Council (IEC) will push for as we move closer to the 2012 General Elections. Currently political parties get most of their funding from private donations with little assistance from the IEC.