Did not realize that Falcon's application was #2, and that Shell was #3, Sasol/Statoil/Chesapeake partnership #4 and now Anglo Operations is#5.

http://www.miningweekly.com/article/now-anglo-applies-to-explore-for-shale-gas-in-karoo-petroleum-agency-sa-2010-03-26

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Diversified miner Anglo American - as well as Shell International - have applied to explore for shale gas in South Africa's arid Karoo, Petroleum Agency SA frontier geology manager Jennifer Marot tells Mining Weekly Online.

This follows the news that South Africa's Sasol has teamed up with Statoil of Norway and Chesapeake of the US to do the same.

"There has been a flurry of interest since the US's shale gas successes," Marot tells Mining Weekly Online, pointing out that Petroleum Agency SA – headed by CEO Mthozami Xiphu – should not be confused with the State-owned PetroSA.

Petroleum Agency SA, she says, is an entirely separate organisation, which is designated by the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act to promote and regulate oil and gas exploration in South Africa.

Marot says that the first application to explore was from the South African company, Bundu Gas & Oil Exploration, which focused on deep resource gas.

The second application was from American shale-gas explorer Falcon Oil and Gas. Shell International was third, the much publicised Sasol/Statoil/Chesapeake partnership fourth and now Anglo Operations has come in fifth.

"The whole of the southern part of the country is now covered with people interested in investigating shale gas," Marot tells Mining Weekly Online.

Shale, which hosts shale gas, has for long been considered too difficult to drill until a recent horizontal-drilling and hydraulic-fracturing breakthrough led to the so-called "shale gale". In the US, the process of fracturing, or ‘fracking' as it is called colloquially, has already caused environmental concern with some politicians worried about the possible contamination of ground water.

Last month, the Financial Times of London reported that "the shale gas rush" had made its way over to the UK from the US and IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates (Cera) chief energy strategist David Hobbs says that the "shale gale" has shifted natural gas from a constrained resource to an abundant one with wide-ranging implications for the energy future in North America.

The new techniques are said to have more than doubled North America's discovered gas resources to 85-trillion cubic feet.

Oil & Gas Eurasia adds that the "shale gale" has the potential to be a "game changer" while IHS Cera chairperson Daniel Yergin says that "it's simply the most significant energy innovation so far this century".

Shale gas is one of a number of "unconventional" sources of natural gas, like coal-bed methane.