Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Chinese shale holds opportunities for U.S. shale firms

When Chinese officials travel to the U.S. to prepare for the shale gas boom they expect back home, they are often told to take the Marcellus Shale as an example.

No, seriously, take it, offered Bart Hyita to a group of Chinese delegates visiting Washington County last month.

“There are many noncore assets that are available in this area,” Mr. Hyita said. The Consol Energy Inc. retiree now runs his own consulting firm and represents Consol as a client. “These properties, along with several coal properties, are available for joint venture or divestment,” he said, yielding the floor to his former Consol colleague, Daniel Su, who read aloud a list of available assets in Chinese. 

The two men were highlighting for the group of 10 diplomats — part of a trade mission that landed them at Southpointe for a morning of aerial well site surveys and an afternoon of business card swapping — one way to get the knowledge they need to tap vast shale reserves back home: Buy American.

“That‘‍s really what we’‍re trying to do, get business into the area,” Mr. Hyita said later.

Chinese companies are not strangers to U.S. shale exploration. For years, they’‍ve pumped money into U.S. firms exploring the shale gas deposits, partly in an effort to learn about the technology so it can be applied to China’‍s own extraction efforts. MORE