Jamestown Foundation: Difficulties and Shortcomings Encroach on Poland’s Shale Gas Dreams

Those eagerly calculating the strategic gains in energy security that shale gas promises to bring Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) may need to run the numbers again. According to a US Energy Information Agency (EIA) study from April 2011, Poland’s natural gas reserves locked up in shale rock were estimated at 5.3 trillion cubic meters – the largest such reserves in Europe and enough to last Poland for two or three centuries. However, the newest survey [PDF], carried out by the Polish Geological Institute (PGI) and made public on Wednesday, March 21, reveals that those original assessments were seven to 13 times too large, and that Poland’s reserves are more likely between 346 and 768 billion cubic meters. This is even smaller than the pessimistic predictions in the Financial Times this week that Polish reserves would turn out to be around one trillion cubic meters.   MORE