China Should Prioritize CBM Over Shale Gas

China should give priority to the exploitation of coal-bed gas rather than shale gas, Xinhua has quoted an energy expert as saying.

Coal-bed gas exploitation is a more urgent initiative to follow, to save energy resources and ease air pollution, said Pan Wei'er, deputy director of the Science and Technology Committee of China Zhigong Party Central Committee, in an article published in China Economic Weekly, Xinhua said.

Pan said, technically and financially, coal-bed gas extraction is more feasible than that of shale gas. He pointed that more coal-bed gas is being wasted because China's coal output keeps increasing by 200 million tonnes every year.

However, shale gas lies in shale, which makes it harder to lose provided the shale has not been exploited.

"Coal-bed gas extraction is of greater urgency," Pan noted in the article. "The reason is that we may not exploit shale gas over the coming decades, but there is little possibility that we do not mine coal."

The Chinese government had planned a total of 5 billion cubic meters of coal-bed gas to be surface mined in 2010. However, only 1.5 billion cubic meters was achieved, less than one third of the planned volume.