PGNiG Begins First Shale Gas Well

Polskie Gornictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo SA (PGNiG), Poland’s dominant gas company, started hydraulic fracturing at its first shale gas well over the weekend, a Bloomberg article reports.

Contractors from Halliburton Co began the hydraulic fracturing process at the Makrowola-1 site, 120 kilometers from Warsaw on Friday. Though Poland is estimated to be sitting on nearly 92 billion cubic meters of gas, Piotr Gliniak, head of exploration for PGNiG, says this first well will give the company a better sense of how big this particular deposit is.

“We’ll know in a year or two whether it makes economic sense to extract this deposit, and we could start production five years from now,” he said.

Poland has been an active force in seeking alternative energy sources, hoping to increase their own energy independence and reduce their dependence on Russia, from whom they import two-thirds of their gas each year.

PGNiG Deputy Chief Executive Officer Waldemar Wojcik has stated that the company will spend more than 100 million zloty ($31 million) on searching for shale gas in Poland in 2010 and increase the expenditure in coming years.

In the last few years, Poland's Environment Ministry has issued roughly 60 shale-gas licenses to companies like PGNiG, Chevron and ExxonMobil to explore what could quickly become the country's biggest gas resource.

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