KSA to drill 7 shale gas wells

The Kingdom will drill about seven test wells for shale gas this year. It will push ahead with exploratory drilling of shale and other unconventional gas reserves which could be twice the size of its conventional gas reserves, which total 286 trillion cubic feet, according to Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi.
“We know where the areas are,” Al-Naimi said at a conference in Hong Kong yesterday. “We have rough estimates of 600 trillion cubic feet of unconventional shale gas. The potential is very huge and we plan to exploit it,” he said during a Credit Suisse conference.
Al-Naimi said the Kingdom “will not stint” in ensuring that its customers’ oil needs are met.
The Kingdom may hold as much as 645 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable shale gas, the world’s fifth-largest deposits behind China, US, Argentina and Mexico, according to estimates by Baker Hughes Inc.
The Kingdom also has about 282.6 trillion cubic feet of proven conventional gas reserves, according to Aramco’s 2011 annual report.
Al-Naimi didn’t say how quickly Saudi Arabia might begin commercial production of shale gas or shale oil, or describe how it will supply the large amounts of water used in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the process used to extract oil and gas from shale.