Bloomberg: Poland Calls for More Shale Gas Drilling to Meet Output Target

Poland must increase shale gas exploration to reach its goal to boost domestic natural gas output to more than 10 billion cubic meters by 2020, Treasury Minister Mikolaj Budzanowski said.

The eastern European country, which imports about two- thirds of its gas from Russia’s OAO Gazprom, wants to double its production of the fuel from about 4.5 billion cubic meters per year by 2019 to improve its negotiating position before talks start on a new long-term contract that ends in 2022.

“Achieving at least 10 billion cubic meters of domestic output is our only chance to cut that dependency,” Budzanowski told a conference today. “Ten-plus wells per year is way too little to achieve that, we need to drill several times more.”  MORE