Head of Kharkiv Regional State Administration Mykhailo Dobkin has said that the extraction of shale gas on the Yuzovska field (in Kharkiv and Donetsk regions) can cause environmental problems, but experts hired by Shell will prevent them.
“Last September, Shell invited independent British experts, whom, along with employees of the Kharkiv sanitary epidemiological station, took samples of water in towns and villages close to which the drilling of the first exploration well began. This sample of water will be [the basis] for all subsequent analyses, and, given that Shell acts publicly and repeatedly held meetings with people, if there’s any change in [the composition of] water in the wells of the people, the necessary measures will be taken,” he said live on Channel 5 on Thursday.
As reported, Shell and Nadra Yuzovska signed a production sharing agreement on the extraction of shale gas on the Yuzovska field in Davos on Jan. 24.
On Jan. 23, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved a draft product sharing agreement (PSA) with Shell and Nadra Yuzovska LLC for the Yuzovska field (7,886 square meters, located in Kharkiv and Donetsk regions).
In May 2012, an interdepartmental commission on PSAs declared Shell the winner for the development of the Yuzovska deposit (Kharkiv and Donetsk regions) and Chevron the winner for the development of the Oleska field (Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk regions). In the middle of January 2013, Donetsk and Kharkiv regional councils agreed the draft PSA for the Yuzovska field.
For the development of the Yuzovska field, with its projected reserves of an estimated 4.054 trillion cubic meters of various categories of gas, the plans call for raising at least Hr 1.6 billion in investment in the geological study phase, and Hr 30 billion in the industrial production phase.
