he net reserves of the UK,’ Caudrilla co-founder Chris Cornelius told Channel 4 News earlier this year.
Across the North Sea, Shell has drilled three exploratory wells in the southern Swedish region of Skaane, and in September Gripen Gas AS was awarded five exploration licences in the Cambro-Ordivian Basin. Caudrilla Resources has secured licences to test for gas in the Netherlands and Spain, while US company Devon is exploring Denmark's shale potential.
ExxonMobil has concessions for Lower Saxony and North Rhine Westphalia in Germany, conducting five drillings, with two more test wells planned by the end of 2010, and owns 750,000 acres of leaseholdings in the Lower Saxony basin alone.
Despite the optimism and even if reserves were as vast as predicted, there is a chance that gas could stay in the ground because extraction is not commercially viable. Compared to the US, which has a plethora of oil and gasfield service firms, Europe is lacking in technical support. Take land rigs, for example: in the US there are approximately 1,500, but in Europe there are less then 100.
Geology is also a factor. According to Dr Quentin Fisher, a professor of petroleum geo-engineering at Leeds University, the lower permeability of shale in Europe could mean extraction is difficult compared to America.
‘I don’t think we currently know the volume of "shales" in Europe that are directly equivalent to those in the states,’ he said. ‘Much of the shale in Europe might have a much higher clay content than in the US, meaning that it could have a lower permeability and be more difficult to fracture hydraulically.’
Luke Starr is a researcher with Ecostorm
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