Shell Looking to Cash in on PetroChina’s Quest for Shale Gas

China, with an 1,275 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of technically recoverable shale gas resources, is certainly not short of supply, but what it does lack is the technology and know-how to extract the hard to reach gas from the country’s complex shale formations.
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It has tasked its three major state-owned oil and gas companies: PetroChina, Sinopec Corp. (NYSE:SHI), and CNOOC Ltd.(NYSE:CEO), with acquiring the requisite expertise in shale development from foreign operators to unlock their vast domestic reserves.

And PetroChina, the listed arm of state-run China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) and the largest downstream operator of the three, has increasingly been turning to Shell to achieve this.

More environmental rules needed for shale gas, says Stanford geophysicist

The topic is controversial. Breaking up rock layers thousands of feet underground with hydraulic fracturing has unleashed so many minuscule bubbles of methane that shale gas now accounts for 30 percent of U.S. gas production, an increase in supply that has pummeled the commodity's price. The gas industry will support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade, Obama said.
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But environmental concerns about the technology behind the boom – specifically hydraulic fracturing – receive near daily news coverage, with opponents saying that toxic additives in the water used for the fracturing have found their way into household tap water, among other concerns.

Obama said natural gas producers will have to disclose the chemicals they add to the fracturing slurry of water and sand when they are working on federal lands. The Secretary of Energy's seven-person advisory group on shale gas, of which Zoback was a member, called for such disclosure by shale gas operators on all lands. The advisory group further recommended that data on a well-by-well basis be posted on publicly available, searchable websites.