The United States, Canada, China, and Argentina are the only four countries producing commercial volumes of either natural gas from shale formations or crude oil from tight formations as the U.S. is the dominant producer of both, U.S. Energy Information Administration, EIA, announced.
'Canada is the only other country to produce both shale gas and tight oil while U.S. is by far the dominant producer of both,' EIA stated.
Shifting into an exporter status since its shale revolution in 2008, America enjoys its domestic production and decreasing independence on imports.
Since so called shale revolution, the U.S. enjoys the benefits of domestic oil and gas production which lowered its dependency on oil imports as its oil production levels reached 9 million barrels per day in 2014.
China is producing only shale gas, Argentina is producing only tight oil; however, Australia and Russia have used hydraulic fracturing techniques, the amount produced did not come from low-permeability shale formations, the administration revealed.
All of the four countries increased their production volumes of shale gas and tight oil in 2014 and natural gas.
Also the total crude oil production of the four countries from shale and tight formations grew at a faster rate last year than production from non-shale and non-tight formations, the data showed.
'In U.S., a large portion of shale gas production growth has occurred in the Appalachian Basin's Marcellus Shale while a large portion of tight oil production has come from Western Gulf Basin's Eagle Ford and from the Williston Basin's Bakken Shale,' according to EIA.
In the Marcellus Region, dry natural gas production increased to 408 million cubic meters per day whereas it was 134 million cubic meters in 2011. In the Bakken Region, oil production in 2014 averaged 1.1 million barrels per day, which rises more than 2.5 times than the 2011 average of 0.4 million barrels per day.
Canada's tight oil production incresed from 0.2 million barrels per day to 0.4 million barrels per day from 2011 to 2014 most of which was produced from Alberta and Saskatchewan, EIA stated. Shale gas production increased from around 500,000 cubic meters per day in 2011 to 1 million cubis meters as of May 2014.
'In China, Sinopec and PetroChina have reported commercial production of shale gas from fields in the Sichuan Basin,' the report said. The combined shale gas output reached around 4,000 cubic meters which corresponds to 1,5 percent of the country's natural gas production.
'In Argentina, tight oil production comes mainly from Vaca Muerta’s Neuquen Basin. National oil company YPF, partnering with Chevron, is producing about 20,000 barrels of tight oil per day from the Loma Campana area,' the U.S. agency said.
EIA also stated that notable exploration studies are ongoing in Algeria, Australia, Colombia, Mexico, and Russia. Commercial shale development requires the ability to rapidly drill and complete a large number of wells in a single productive geologic formation, EIA added.
By Nuran Erkul
Anadolu Agency
nuran.erkul@aa.com.tr