India's Essar Oil Discovers 8 Tcf of Shale Gas in Raniganj Coal Block

India’s biggest unconventional gas explorer Essar Oil has made a discovery of 8 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of original in-place shale gas resources underneath its CBM reserves in Raniganj (East) block in West Bengal, Hindu Businessline has reported.

The study was done by an independent US firm Invenire in conjunction with US Trade and Development Agency.

Company’s E&P CEO Manish Maheshwari said given the present trend of roughly 20-25 per cent recovery factor, one can be looking at 1.6-1.7 tcf of recoverable resources.

Maheshwari said that both the CBM and shale resources can be tapped concurrently, but the company is awaiting government guidelines on exploring unconventional resources under the new Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy (HELP), Hindu BusinessLine reported.

Essar Oil is already the biggest CBM producer in India with output of more than 1 mscmd. It is looking to reach production figures of 3 mscmd by 2017-18 fiscal.

As per a 2016 NSAI (Netherland Sewell & Associates, Inc) report, the possible gross CBM reserves in the Raniganj (East) Block is estimated at 1.09 tcf (trillion cubic feet), the company said.