页岩气特别报告.pdf

Breaking new ground A special report on global shale gas developmentsTMBreaking new ground A special report on global shale gas developments© The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 20111IntroductionWorries about climate change are deepening in many countries. Proponents of gas, which burns cleaner than coal, suggest that it could be part of the answer—but preferably indigenous gas, for the sake of energy security. At the same time, even as energy demand surges ahead, the giants of the oil industry are finding it harder than ever to tap new reserves, which is forcing them to look to previously neglected, harder-to-reach hydrocarbons. Among these, hitherto disregarded shale gas reserves are generating the most enthusiasm. The groundwork for this has been a remarkable upswing of activity in the US, where over the past decade innovative techniques have propelled shale gas from irrelevance to a position where it now makes up one-quarter of all natural gas production. The US Energy Information Administration, an official government body, forecasts that this proportion will roughly double by 2035. And although the shale gas story has been overwhelmingly a US one to date, the search for shale is accelerating around the world. In this special report, we bring together a collection of recent articles looking at fledgling shale gas developments worldwide, with a focus on the countries thought to hold the largest reserves. Breaking new ground A special report on global shale gas developments© The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 20112Corporates: Gas attack 3Supermajors’ hot pursuit of shale gas is one of several reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the industry’s prospects.China: Preparing for opportunity 6Chinese policymakers and state behemoths are laying the groundwork to begin extracting the country’s apparently mighty shale gas resources.United States: Unconventional conflict 9Despite an environmental backlash and other concerns, the shale gas revolution in the US will continue to gain ground.Argentina: Untapped potential 12Unconventional hydrocarbons meet familiar problems in Argentina.Mexico: Great expectations 14Enormous shale gas reserves offer hope to Mexico’s moribund energy industry. South Africa: Game changer? 16Shell and other shale gas players meet stiff resistance in South Africa, which has the continent’s most promising reserves of the gas. Canada: Between a rock and a hard place 18Canada’s shale gas industry is caught between a gas glut and stiffening environmental opposition.Poland: The next Norway? 20Shale gas gives Poland a chance to bypass Russia—maybe.India: Shale of the century? 22Excitement about a potential Indian shale gas boom is building. As yet, there is not enough evidence to justify the hype. Russia: Bearish implications 25A global shale gas bonanza could cause big headaches for Russia.Appendix 28Estimates of global shale gas reserves.Click on a headline to skip directly to that articleContentsBreaking new ground A special report on global shale gas developments© The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 20113Supermajors’ hot pursuit of shale gas is one of several reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the industry’s prospects.The shale gas industry might be held up as a paragon of free-market, US entrepreneurialism. Deregulation of the US natural gas market in the late 1970s created the conditions for pioneering small companies to dream up new techniques to get natural gas out of apparently impossible places deep below the ground. Industry heavyweights were slow out of the blocks and even today the shale gas industry remains fragmented with plenty of smaller players. Visibly, though, big energy corporations are aggressively seeking to carve out a bigger share of the shale phenomenon. In recent years, supermajors and other resources giants have made up for their previous apathy by buying their way into the US shale gas market. ExxonMobil became North America’s foremost gas producer when it paid US$36bn in 2010 for XTO Energy, a US company with stakes in a number of major US shales. Exxon has followed up with smaller deals and remains on the prowl. Supermajors have set their sights on the gigantic Marcellus Shale, with Royal Dutch Shell snapping up East Resources and Chevron inking a deal for Atlas. Total and BP have also invested billions in shale plays, while Australia’s BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, in August 2011 completed its acquisition of Petrohawk Energy, a US shale gas producer, for US$12bn. Such enthusiasm might seem counterintuitive, bubbling over as it did while oil prices were recovering from their slump in 2008-09, but US (Henry Hub) gas prices had been driven down to bargain basement levels by a shale-fuelled supply glut (see chart), meaning that oil might have looked a more attractive investment than gas. These contrarian-looking bets on shale are explained in no small measure by the supermajors’ pa。