The mystery surrounding recent unexpected earthquake that ran across a large part of Southern Africa and had its epicenter in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) is beginning to unfold and while the Botswana Geoscience Institute in Lobatse claim it was caused by nothing other than natural causes, reports have surfaced alleging that fracking activities in the reserve are to blame. In his article published in The Daily Maverick this week, Jeffery Barbee points out that although there's not enough information to ascertain that indeed the earthquake was caused by fracking activities in the CKGR, one thing that is certain is that to produce gas from coal seams you need to pump out a lot of water that they sit in to let the gas “desorb”. This produced water is usually pumped back into the ground, somewhere nearby and very deep down which has been shown to change the basal pressure underground. And, he writes, the potential consequences of that? Earthquakes! According to Barbee, companies had been hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in protected areas like the Central Kalahari Game Reserve for years, exploring for good gas returns from Botswana’s coal layers. The article pointed out a company that has ongoing…