India's Shale Gas Reserves May Be Lower Than Initially Estimated

India’s shale gas reserves may turn out to be much lower that initially estimated.

A report in Financial Express newspaper said that latest estimates suggest that country’s shale gas reserves may be about 6.1 TCF. Initial estimates have put Indian’s reserves between 300 trillion cubic feet (TCF) to 2,100 TCF of producible and non-producible gas.

The estimate of technical recoverable gas recently given to India by the US Geological Survey is a fraction of the in-place gas that could be recovered with existing technology without regard to cost. If commercial viability of extraction is also taken into consideration, the amount of recoverable gas would be lower. Earlier, the US Energy Information Administration had given an estimate of 293 TCF of in-place gas, whereas New York-listed Schlumberger had made an initial gas-in-place estimate of 300-2,100 TCF.

Even the latest assessment of 6.1 TCF could prove to be ambitious when experts get access to more geological data and interpret them to remove the various uncertainties involved in making projections, the newspaper said.

India, which plans to announce a policy for auctioning shale gas blocks by March 2013, is way behind China that has already signed its first shale gas production sharing contract with the Royal Dutch Shell in March. Beijing wants to produce 6.5 billion cubic meters (BCM) a year of shale gas by 2015 and close to 100 BCM by 2020.