Poland's shale nonstory

April 1, 2012
Press reportage of Poland's recent assessment of shale gas and shale oil resources set new highs in confusion and imprecision.

Press reportage of Poland's recent assessment of shale gas and shale oil resources set new highs in confusion and imprecision.

Various articles described the report's figures as reserves, which they are not. Some characterized the report as showing a decline, whereas it was written as a baseline study that had no precedent. And others made it sound like a review of recent drilling, which it wasn't.

Furthermore, the assessment by the Polish Geological Institute covered only part of the country, the Baltic-Podlasie-Lublin basin.

Reserves and resources

The PGI report—the first such study performed—was conducted from October 2010 to February 2012 and is "based only on archive data collected for 39 key wells throughout years 1950-1990." It included no data for modern shale wells. PGI proposed to issue a new report every 2 years.

The 2012 report excludes conventional hydrocarbons. It also excludes tight gas and coalbed methane.

PGI estimated shale gas recoverable resources in the onshore and offshore Baltic-Podlasie-Lublin basin at a maximum of 1.92 trillion cu m (67.8 tcf), and it said that given the constraints on key parameters of the calculations the more probable range is 346-768 billion cu m (12-27 tcf). That compares with conventional gas resources of 145 billion cu m (5.1 tcf), the institute said.

Similarly, PGI estimated shale oil recoverable resources in the same basin at a maximum of 3.9 billion bbl and, given the constraints, a more likely 1.5-1.9 billion bbl. That compares with conventional oil resources of 190 million bbl.

By comparison, Oil & Gas Journal publishes a table each December that lists our estimates of oil and gas proved reserves for 109 countries. OGJ estimated Poland's proved reserves as of Jan. 1, 2012, at 155 million bbl of oil and 3.4 tcf of natural gas. These numbers make Poland one of the smaller reserves holders in Eastern Europe and in the world.

The institute noted that its report presents a geological model and resource estimate "based on public data gathered prior to beginning of exploration drilling."

Behind the assessment

Shale formations have not been flow-tested in old wells in Poland, so the institute drew its conclusions from drilling reports, logs, and cores.

Analyzing logs and cores from older wells is okay, but the constraints the institute references are its inability to derive porosity and permeability data because the core breaks down over time. Good total organic carbon readings and mineralogy should be available, however.

The new wells being drilled will focus on areas where the best prospectivity would be, one operator told OGJ. "Poland's overall resource potential can be expected to fluctuate up and down over the next few years as more wells are drilled. What are now geologic assumptions will be proven or disproven after drilling results are analyzed," the operator said.

"The change in prospectivity from this report doesn't change a thing for our acreage prospectivity as we've drilled new wells and understand more about our area than was available from old wells. Each operator has the same situation as it drills wells on its blocks," the operator said.

The real story

The real story in Poland remains its shale gas potential, which has hardly been evaluated by drilling.

The dozens of companies that hold exploration blocks in the country are not relinquishing them, as could be expected if the assessment had been up to date and as pessimistic as the reportage made it sound.

The exploratory drilling that needs to take place over at least the next several years will begin to tell the real story, and anyone who expected a boom to unfold on the scale or pace of the Barnett shale since the mid-1990s is bound to be disappointed. So may the naysayers.

More Oil & Gas Journal Current Issue Articles
More Oil & Gas Journal Archives Issue Articles
View Oil and Gas Articles on PennEnergy.com