Polish Prospects
Poland’s chief geologist (and Deputy Minister of Environment) Henryk Jezierski says that his country’s prospects are the best when it comes to Europe’s potential for tapping into gas from shale deposits, but admits that there’s no way to verify exactly how much gas there is. Hopes for a shale gas “bonanza” prevail.
An article on Business New Europe describes the atmosphere surrounding Poland’s shale gas potential, including how speculation over that potential made its way into the country’s recent presidential political campaign.
The winner of the Polish presidential election on July 4, the ruling party candidate Bronislaw Komorowski, said before the election that Poland would not sign the long-awaited gas deal with Russia if it finds enough shale gas in its territory.
Still, Poland has made a long-term deal with Russia to import 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year; whether that will be re-negotiated all depends on how much shale gas Poland really has. Some senior government officials have even boasted of the country’s shale gas wealth. The truth could come out soon enough.
More will be known about the scale of Poland's unconventional gas reserves — hard-to-get-at deposits of tight and shale gas, as well as coal-bed methane — when Canada's Lane Energy begins drilling a test well in northern Poland in June. The testing could last as long as four years, but the potential rewards are enormous. US consultancies estimate that there could be anywhere from 1.5 trillion to 3 trillion cubic metres (cm) of gas buried in Poland's shale formations.
But the piece points out that the changing dynamics of the global natural gas market could throw Polish shale gas production into question.
While the possibility of becoming a gas giant is turning the heads of some Polish politicians, the economics are quite complicated. Poland currently pays about $340 per 1,000 cm for gas from Russia, but that price may fall if US production continues to grow, making it difficult to calculate the business sense of going forward with drilling in Poland – which will only happen in a decade or more.
Not to mention that strict environmental rules in the European Union may seriously impede a US-type “shale gas revolution” from occurring.