WSJ: Europe’s Shale Business in Race Against Time

EUROPE’S FRACKING PROBLEMS

The question of whether North America’s shale success can or will be replicated elsewhere is often quite narrowly constructed around the amount of gas that could, potentially, be underground.

In the U.K., for example, a geological survey has estimated some 1.3 quadrillion cubic feet of gas is contained within the shale formations under the Bowland area in northwest England.

While a big question mark hangs over how much of that huge amount is recoverable, in Europe size isn’t everything.

Anyone wishing to create the ideal conditions for a shale-gas industry would likely end up with the American model, Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s Michael Liebreich says: the winning combination of great geology, low population densities, an existing pipeline network, a fragmented regulatory environment, landowners with subsurface mineral rights, and a liquid market for rigs and drilling services.

Europe has few of these attributes.  MORE