A piece for Petroleum Economist’s December issue, on the potential for shale gas in Europe. Could be a bigger story next year… Full story on PE’s website.
Unconventional gas discoveries have transformed the North American gas sector. Could the same happen in Europe? Derek Brower reports
AS EUROPEAN gas-consumption growth stalls, a revolution in its domestic upstream could bring hundreds of trillions of cubic feet (cf) of new supply into the picture, transforming the continent’s energy sector – and relations with its neighbours.
For proponents of shale gas in Europe, the US experience is the blueprint. Advances in drilling techniques have opened huge US reserves of unconventional gas that now mean the country is virtually self-reliant in terms of its gas-supply needs. One authority on US gas reserves, the Colorado School of Mines’ Potential Gas Committee, says that thanks to the development of shale-gas, coal-bed methane (CBM) and tight-gas reserves, the US now has more than 2,000 trillion cf of gas available. By comparison, Russia’s reserves of conventional gas, the largest resource in the world, are just over 1,529 trillion cf, according to BP.
No-one yet says Europe’s unconventional gas resource could be greater than Russia’s conventional reserves (let alone the unconventional gas that could be at Russia’s disposal). But a 2007 study from the National Petroleum Council, an advisory body to the US Department of Energy, estimated that the continent could hold up to 549 trillion cf of shale gas; 431 trillion cf of tight gas; and 275 trillion cf of CBM (see Table 1). For a continent whose hydrocarbon production peak is thought to be gone, it is a mouth-watering prospect. (…)
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