Poland Stands by Plans of Starting Commercial Shale Gas Production in Three Years

Opening an industry conference in Warsaw, Poland's Treasury Minister reiterated that the government expects larger scale production of shale gas to start not later than in the early months of 2015.

“There are many doubters but I think than in late 2014, early 2015, at least one pad, based on 12 wells, will be working. I won’t believe anyone who says it’s unrealistic.”

Last year Mikolaj Budzanowski mentioned that the production of shale gas in the country might reach at least 200 million cubic meters in 2014 and 500 million cubic meters in 2015, while the number of new drillings will reach 1,000 annually in 2020.

The Minister's comments indicate that the Polish government is not going to alter its agenda, in spite of Wednesday’s publication of estimates putting the county’s recoverable shale gas reserves at much lower level than assessed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, announced a year ago.

The new report by the Polish Geological Institute and United States Geological Survey puts recoverable reserves between 346 bcm to 768 bcm, with the most optimistic scenario pointing to 1.9 tcm.

Speaking at the conference “Polska na Gazie,” Mr. Budzanowski observed that the report was based on just a few dozen exploration wells of which the last one was made twenty years ago.  “More intensive drilling is needed to precisely determine resources” – said the minister.

In fact core samples were extracted in the period from 1950s to the 1990s, and according to the PGI geologists, incompatible format of data gathered in the communist times heavily complicated the calculation process.

(The Warsaw conference was ambiguously titled “Polska na gazie” meaning “Poland on gas,”Gas-powered Poland,” or "Gassed Poland”)