Significant European Shale Gas Production Will Take Time
Speaking at the World Energy Congress in Montreal, Shell CEO Peter Vosser stated that significant production of unconventional gas from shale gas, tight gas and coal-bed methane (CBM) resources “will not take off before 2020” in western Europe.
Asked by Gas Matters Today why he thought significant production of unconventional gas would take so long in Europe, given how much interest it has aroused over the past year, he replied:
“We have only just started with exploring so you need to compare this to the US back in the early 2000s. That’s the first reason."
“The second is the dense population you have in Europe will make permitting quite different – most probably more difficult. And we have to go through this. This is different to places like Canada or the US, where you have vast square miles of unpopulated areas where you can work on these things. So permitting will be slower in Europe.”
Shell is active in European unconventional gas exploration and development in Ukraine, Romania and in Sweden, where it already drilling its first exploration wells.
Read the Speech given by Peter Voser, Chief Executive Officer, Royal Dutch Shell plc, at the World Energy Congress in Montreal, September 13th, 2010.