Should India Go Ahead With Shale Gas Exploration, Or Will It Be Wasted Effort? – OpEd
Shale is a fine grained sedimentary rock that can be a rich resource for petroleum and natural gas, and as such shale gas is the natural gas that is trapped within shale formations.
The Government of India had announced policy guidelines on October 14, 2013, whereby national oil companies ONGC and OIL were to take up shale gas and oil exploration activities in their nominated blocks.
While the ultimate success of shale gas exploration efforts in India remains to be seen from the point of view of technological and economic feasibility, the fact remains that very large quantity of water has to be injected for shale gas exploration. Such water will have to be pumped from running river or ground water sources. Depletion of ground water resources can be a scary situation.
Given the fact that several parts of India are already suffering from severe water scarcity due to frequent drought like situation and “water war” between the states are becoming very frequent, the question is whether India should go ahead with shale gas exploration at all that would require huge quantity of fresh water and result in large quantity of used waste water that would be chemically contaminated.
Should India spend energy, time, efforts and resources in what appears to be a negative project?
Global trend
Though the USA has been the forerunner in shale gas exploration in the world, shale gas will not be uniquely American phenomenon. There is similar geology in several countries around the world.
The UK Parliament recently voted narrowly to allow fracking to extract shale gas under the country’s national parks and certain other protected sites. The new legislation, which permits drilling at least 1,200 meters below the surface in national parks, was approved by 298 votes to 261.
China is taking steps to exploit shale gas resources. China plans to produce 6.5 billion cubic meter of shale gas by 2016, 15 billion cubic meter by 2017 and more than 30 billion cubic meter by 2020.
While the examples of the initiatives of the above countries are there, India has to approach shale gas exploration issues with great caution, considering the ground realities in the country, where water shortage is becoming increasingly evident. A blind following of the approach of the other countries could prove to be counterproductive for India.
