Foreign Policy: Poland's Shale Gas Dream

About a year ago, Poland lit what it calls the "Flame of Hope," the first flare to burn over a shale gas well in the country. Its photo ran as a full-page ad in Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita, Poland's leading newspapers. "Don't put out the flame of hope," the caption read, urging readers to express their support for shale gas development. In a deeply Catholic country, the religious subtext was hard to avoid: Poland was the cathedral and this huge flame was a candle of prayer -- a prayer for energy independence.

Ever since the U.S. Department of Energy's April 2011 announcement that Poland may hold enormous quantities of shale gas -- 5.3 trillion cubic meters, enough for 300 years of consumption -- hydrocarbon fever has swept the country. Even when the Polish Geological Institute and the U.S. Geological Survey reduced those figures by 90 percent in early 2012, the faith in shale remained unshaken. Nowhere else in Europe has shale gas generated so much enthusiasm among both politicians and the public. The government has already granted 111 exploration concessions on an area of 35,000 square miles, or about a third of the territory of Poland, while polls from last year suggest that 73 percent of the country's nearly 40 million people back developing shale.  MORE