Saudi Arabia Plans Seven Shale Gas Wells in 2013

Saudi Arabia is planning to drill seven shale gas wells in 2013, country’s oil minister Ali Al-Naimi has said.

“We have rough estimates of over 600 trillion cubic feet of unconventional and shale gas, so the potential is very huge and we plan to exploit it,” Al-Naimi said at the Credit Suisse Asian Investment conference in Hong Kong, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The nation may hold as much as 645 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable shale gas, the world’s fifth-largest deposits behind China, the U.S., Argentina and Mexico, according to estimates by Baker Hughes Inc, Bloomberg said in the same report. 

Bloomberg added that according to Saudi Aramco’s 2011 annual report Saudia Arabia has about 282.6 trillion cubic feet of proven conventional gas reserves.