A shale gas study initiated with the support of USAID has proved that Pakistan had 10,159 TCF of shale gas resource and 2,323bn barrels of shale oil, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi at a press conference in Islamabad.
“The conclusion (of the study) is that Pakistan has huge potential of shale gas and oil which is much bigger than previous estimates of the United States Energy Information Administration (USEIA) and technology is available at home to produce this resource,” the minister said.
He said the country had a massive potential of 10,159 TCF shale gas and 2.3tr barrels of oil. He said the USEIA had reported in April 2011 the presence of 206 TCF shale gas in lower Indus Basin out of which 51 TCF was termed technically recoverable.
However, in June 2013 the USEIA revised the shale gas resource in Pakistan at 586 TCF in place out of which 105 TCF was tipped as technically recoverable and also included 9.1bn barrels of shale oil technically recoverable out of 227bn barrels shale oil in place.
He said the findings were reached when recoverable data of 1,611 wells were collected and shale formation of 1,312 wells through drill was examined. The study covered lower and middle Indus Basin, geographically spread over Sindh, southern Punjab and eastern Balochistan. He said 70 per cent of wells data were used to develop the study.
Abbasi said that the samples were sent to New Tech Laboratory in Houston to verify shale gas and oil resource in place. The study confirmed that Pakistan had the potential of shale gas and oil which was more than expectations.
He said Pakistan had the technology for exploring conventional oil and gas that could be used for exploiting shale oil and gas. However, the country requires more technology for exploiting shale oil and gas resource on a larger scale. He said the environmental issues, availability of water and higher cost of drilling were the real challenges.
He said OGDCL and PPL have been assigned the task to explore shale gas and oil from one well to determine cost of extracting them.
