Shanghai Daily: China needs reform to tap huge shale gas deposits

CHINA has just claimed to possess the world's largest shale gas reserves - double those of the US - but it will take time to extricate the unconventional fuel.

To spur the investment and technology needed to commercialize shale gas, analysts say, China needs to reform its highly consolidated upstream gas industry.

The Ministry of Land and Resources, in its first official estimate of shale gas reserves, said last week that the country holds 25.08 trillion cubic meters of technically recoverable deposits, citing a preliminary survey. That amount, in theory anyway, is enough to power China's gas needs for two centuries, based on current consumption.  MORE