ITAR-TASS: Shale gas production in Ukraine can cause irreparable damage to environment

Commercial shale gas production in Ukraine can cause irreparable damage to the environment, the head of the Ukrainian Ecological League, Tatyana Timochko, said.

The Ukrainian company Nadra Yuzovskaya and Royal Dutch Shell signed a production sharing agreement with regard to shale gas production in the Yuzovskoye field in the Kharkov and Donetsk regions.

Timochko said at a roundtable discussion on Ukraine’s energy prospects held on Monday, February 11, that the agreement leaves many “open questions” for experts and the general public.

She said, citing findings by Ukrainian scientists from the National Academy of Sciences, that it would take an area of about two hectares to drill just one well.

According to the expert, this will mean stripping the area “down to clay” in order to get a stable solid surface for process equipment, whereupon “thousands of hectares of fertile land will be ruined irrecoverably”.  MORE