Conoco to Drill Exploratory Shale-Gas Well in Poland Next Month

ConocoPhillips, the third-biggest U.S. energy company, and its Eastern European partner Lane Energy Poland Sp. z o.o. plan to start drilling their first exploratory well for natural gas in a Polish shale formation next month.

Shale drilling, where rock formations are horizontally drilled and fractured using water and chemicals under high pressure, is driving a surge in U.S. natural-gas output. It last year made the U.S. the world’s largest gas producer, overtaking Russia, and drove prices lower. Poland now imports 72 percent of its gas, primarily from Russia and other former Soviet Union countries.

“Our permitting has taken a little longer than we expected, but everything is in place now,” Kamlesh Parmar, country manager at Warsaw-based Lane Energy, said in an e-mail today. “The well pad has been constructed and is now ready to receive the rig.”

Polskie Gornictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo SA, Poland’s dominant gas company, drilled the country’s first shale well in April and results were encouraging enough to plan for more fracturing in Markowola, southeast Poland, in July, Joanna Zakrzewska, a company spokeswoman, said by phone today.

Polskie Gornictwo plans to drill for shale gas on its own as well as with Chevron Corp. and Marathon Oil Corp., the U.S. second-largest and fourth-largest energy companies, respectively. Drilling with partners hasn’t started yet, Malgorzata Olczyk, a Polskie Gornictwo spokeswoman, said.

Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest U.S. energy company, has five concessions for natural-gas exploration in Poland, the Environment Ministry said in January.

By: Katarzyna Klimasinska in Houston for Bloomberg

Source: Bloomberg