Years after the shale boom took off here in America, the rest of the world is still woefully behind in developing their own shale reserves, which naturally raises the question: why is shale failing abroad? . . .
Earlier this week Royal Dutch Shell announced it would put its shale operations in South Africa on hold after delays in the permitting process and the drop in the global price of oil soured its initial hopes. Opaque regulations and bureaucratic snarls also helped kill shale proposals in places like Poland and Lithuania.
China is estimated to have nearly twice as much shale gas as the United States (it has by far the world’s largest reserves), but its formations are in remote regions that lack important infrastructure like roads and pipelines. Moreover, China’s rocks are more “crunched” than America’s relatively even-layered “wedding cake” geology, further complicating efforts there.
Local protests have also posed a large problem in virtually every country with significant shale reserves, from the UK to Poland to China. Unlike the rest of the world, America affords property owners the rights to what’s underneath their property as well as what’s on the surface. These mineral rights have helped overcome the kind of not-in-my-backyard thinking that has stopped operations elsewhere in the world.
Too much government regulation, and too much NIMBY. S'ok, we'll just sell you our excess, at the market price.
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