Cape Town - The US Department of Energy report released this month, urging the US to begin exploiting oil reserves in the Arctic, contained evidence that the shale gas boom in that country would not last more than a decade.
Jonathan Deal, director of the anti-fracking lobby group Treasure the Karoo Action Group, said the US report had put paid to President Barack Obama’s statement that US shale gas would last 100 years.
“While we are disappointed by the news that the US plans to move ahead with allowing Arctic drilling, we are encouraged by the acknowledgement of the US government that shale gas is not proving to be the ‘game-changer’ it has been branded by the oil industry.
“The inaccuracy of President Obama’s statement of ‘100 years of gas’, fuelled by the industry, also quickly comes into perspective,” Deal said.
The report, by the US National Petroleum Council, commissioned by the US Department of Energy, said the Arctic could contribute to sustaining US crude oil supplies at a time when oil and gas production in the “lower 48” states – which exclude Alaska and Hawaii – “is projected to be in decline”.
The US had cut oil imports by fracking for shale gas, but the report predicted the shale gas boom would not last much further than the next decade.
The Arctic is estimated to hold the world’s largest remaining untapped gas reserves and some of its largest undeveloped oil reserves.
The US report said Russia had been drilling new exploration wells in the Kara and Pechora Seas.
While China did not have Arctic territory, it was investing “millions of dollars in Arctic research, infrastructure and natural resource development”.
It said new sources of crude oil production for the US in the 2030s and 2040s would only be available “if new offshore exploration drilling can ramp up in Alaska during this decade”.
About fracking in South Africa, Deal said it would take billions of rand of public money to develop infrastructure to service the shale gas industry which, from the US experience, may not be needed for long and would leave “a legacy of expensive white elephants”.
Shell SA spokeswoman Janine Nel said to determine the quantity and quality of shale gas in the Karoo, the company would have to drill exploration wells.
Nel said shale gas development across the world would not be uniform, but would depend on the quantity, ability to reach it, gas supply and demand, costs, contractor capability, finding solutions to environmental problems and community acceptance.
While the US Energy Information Administration had estimated there may be enough shale gas in the Karoo to help South Africa to become self-sufficient in energy for “several decades”, Nel said the real issue was to determine whether sufficient gas was held underground and whether it could be extracted economically and safely.
Local geology determined the quantity and quality of gas.
“Whether we have viable and economically recoverable quantities of gas, we need to explore and drill a few wells,” she said.