According to the Ministry of Land and Resources, China owns 25.08 trillion cubic meters of shale gas in its exploitable reserves. In the U.S., shales gas output has quadrupled from 2007 to 2010 and plunged the price of natural gas to a 10-year low.
But China's reserves are buried twice deeper than American shale gas, and concentrated in mountainous or arid regions that present far more complex geological challenges, said Bao Shujing, a senior engineer with the petroleum research center at Sinopec, China's second largest energy company.
Shale gas extractors have to spend 40 to 80 million yuan on average to drill a single well in China. The costs in the U.S. range from 17 to 23 million yuan, Bao said.
The mass exploitation of shale gas is restrained by China's scarce water resources as well. Shale gas extraction usually requires 20,000 cubic meters of water to fracture each well, while many shale gas blocks are located in regions where water resource can barely meet local population's daily use, said Yang Kun, chief engineer with the oil and gas development company of China Huadian Corporation.
Landmark building should respect the public's feeling
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