Caution urged for shale gas exploitation (2)

Energy Information Administration of the US Department of Energy released a report in April 2011 that the recoverable shale gas reserves is 187 trillion m3 in the world, among of which the reserves in US is 24.4 trillion m3 (accounting for about 13 percent) and in China up to 36 trillion m3 (accounting for about 20 percent), ranking the first in the world. Ministry of Land and Resources of China released for the first time in March 2012 that the potential of shale gas geological resources is 134.42 trillion m3 in the land territory of China, among of which 25.08 trillion m3 can be recovered (excluding the shale gas in Qinghai-Tibet area).


By comparing with the above two official statistics, it is found that there is a large difference in the estimate of the recoverable shale gas reserves in China. However, the data released by MLR is only based on technical feasibility and does not take into consideration a series of restrictions like large consumption of water resources, environmental impact, population density and pipeline transport. Furthermore, the geological and exploiting conditions in China are not as favorable as in the US. During the real exploitation process, it should also take into consideration a lot of other restrictions besides the technical feasibility, so the resources which can be exploited and produced really are much less than the released data.

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