Starting in the Barnett shale of Texas, the shale gas boom has been primarily a North American play. U.S. natural gas company Chesapeake Energy Corp its joint venture partner Statoil ASA and the oil and gas arm of Sasol Ltd recently launched a bid to explore for shale gas in the Karoo Basin in South Africa. The Karoo basin has unproved shale gas potential and significant exploration efforts are required to assess the resource.
Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake’s chief executive officer, told investors in a Nov. 17 presentation that his company and Statoil were looking at potential shale gas fields in Eastern Europe, Asia and South America. Companies are exploring throughout the world for shale gas and new discoveries may have far reaching implications.Shale gas projects are underway in France and Poland while exploration is underway in other parts of the EU, Asia, Australia and in China. Some comments suggest that the amount of shale gas in the U.K. would offset or replace declining natural gas production in the North Sea. Certainly a large discovery or two in Europe would be welcome news to offset the influence of power Russia yields on the EU energy market. (See HRN: Natural gas to postpone global energy crisis)
Chesapeake’s Karoo application, which requires the approval of the South African government, is expected to take about 12 months to process. Pasa, which is South Africa’s agency for the promotion of onshore and offshore petroleum exploration, is empowered to issue exploration rights for an initial period of three years, which are renewable for a maximum of three additional two-year periods. Should exploration prove successful, the JV could move to secure a production right for a period of 30 years, which was also renewable.
