The past few years hydraulic fracturing has been a hotly researched topic. Currently, most published documents are just speculation of what can happen if hydraulic fracturing is to take place in South Africa. There is very little work done to firstly establish a baseline on the current groundwater quality and secondly look at the current state of the groundwater around the Soekor wells. For these reasons a geochemical investigation was launched looking at the Soekor wells and the surrounding boreholes to determine a valid baseline.
Looking at the two Soekor wells; geochemical analyses was conducted on water, soil and rocks. The drill core of the wells; soils from the waste ponds and water at or nearby the wells were sampled and analysed. By making use of XRF; XRD, Stable Isotopes and water chemistry analyses, a better picture of these wells and groundwater can be developed to give better guidelines to what should happen during the monitoring of hydraulic fracturing wells.