Mudah2an shale exit tidak terjadi di Indonesia, melainkan tetap exist for shale gas exploration.. ExxonMobil in Poland shale exit
By Kathrine Schmidt and news wires 18 June 2012 18:00 GMT *Following two disappointing test wells in January, ExxonMobil has made the decision to call off further exploration there, a spokesman said Monday. * "There have been no demonstrated sustained commercial hydrocarbon flow rates in our two wells in the Lublin and Podlasie basins," ExxonMobil spokesman Patrick McGinn told Upstream in an email. "We do not have additional drilling plans in Poland." The supermajor's chief executive Rex Tillerson in March alluded to some of the technical challenges of drilling in rock formations that had initially held high hopes for unconventional production. The US Energy Information Administration has pegged Poland as having among the largest shale reserves in Europe. Nonetheless, ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson spoke to the technical difficulties there in a New York meeting with analysts in March. “Some of the shales don’t respond as well to hydraulic fracturing,” the news wire quoted Tillerson as saying during a meeting with reporters after his presentation to analysts. “It’s going to take research and time in the lab to understand that.” Reuters said that a government report in March slashed estimates of Poland's shale gas reserves to 346 billion to 768 billion cubic meters, or about one-tenth of previous estimates, denting hopes for an energy source that could play a key role in weaning Europe off Russian gas. Poland has granted 112 shale exploration licences to ExxonMobil, Chevron and other firms, even as some countries, including France and Bulgaria, have banned shale exploration pending further environmental studies. The Poles are keen to wean themselves off their heavy reliance on coal and imported Russian gas, partly due to environmental commitments they face as a European Union member nation. "ExxonMobil realised that commercial extraction was not possible with currently available technology. This is a general problem in Poland that shale rocks are too tight to allow extraction," an industry source told the news wire, asking not to be identified. Abundant shale gas production in Poland poses a potential threat to Russia's supremacy in Europe, where it supplies a quarter of the gas used in the EU. Yet Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom has repeatedly played down the threat and on Monday Sergei Komlev, head of contract structuring and price formation at Gazprom Export, told a conference in London that Polish gas would struggle to achieve the low prices of US shale rivals. "In Poland the price for shale gas will be above $15 per million British thermal units, over three times than in the US where prices will rise to $5-10 (from a current $2.50) once they export gas," Komlev said. Last Wednesday, the government abruptly called off a presentation of a legal framework for the development of shale gas resources, disappointing industry players eager for more clarity before committing further to investing in the sector. "If this draft was published and ExxonMobil later declared it was leaving the country, it would most likely have been a disaster in terms of the country's image," said Piotr Spaczynski, partner at law firm Spaczynski, Szczepaniak & Wspolnicy, which advises foreign oil companies investing in Polish shale. The government now plans to unveil the draft law by the end of the month, and has said it will cover exploration and extraction of oil and gas from both conventional and unconventional sources, including taxation, licensing and environmental issues. "If I were the government, I would scrap all drafts and let companies work, or publish a draft supporting exploration and not one directed at excessive taxation," Spaczynski said. Poland had high hopes for shale after a study by the US Energy Information Association in 2011 estimated Polish reserves at 5.3 trillion cubic metres, enough to cover domestic demand for some 300 years. The government's study in March slashed estimates for recoverable shale gas reserves at 346 to 768 billion cubic metres. Despite ExxonMobil, the world's most valuable energy company, to deciding to scrap exploration, other firms said they remained committed. "(Our company) continues to remain extremely optimistic about the outlook for Polish shale gas," said John Buggenhaggen, exploration director at UK-listed San Leon Energy.
