MENAFN: Shale gas: China offers greatest prize of all

China will almost certainly fail to meet its target of producing 6.5 billion cubic meters of shale gas per year by 2015. Even so, there can be no doubt it is set to become one of the world's largest shale gas producers over the next decade.

In its latest annual outlook, published recently, BP predicts China will be the most successful country outside North America in developing shale gas by 2030. Given the country's enormous shale resources and large prospective market, coupled with its ready availability of capital and proven engineering expertise, it is hard to argue with that assessment.

Estimates vary but most analysts put China's technically recoverable shale resources at around 1,000 trillion cubic feet (tcf) (28 trillion cubic meters), which would make them the largest in the world, and about 20 percent higher than in the US (862 tcf). MORE