Shell is studying opportunities to extract shale gas in Izium district (Kharkiv region), Deputy Head of Kharkiv Regional State Administration Yuriy Sapronov has said.
According to him, this is the main interest of the company in Kharkiv region. Sapronov noted that the region’s administration is also interested in attracting a large company with an international name to the region.
"According to the United States Geological Survey, there are five to eight trillion cubic meters of shale gas in Ukraine. Certainly, Shell is strategically important for us. Today, I cannot name the exact sum of investment, but we are speaking about not less than $1 billion. If Shell starts exploratory drilling this year, the project’s implementation will take from three to five years," Sapronov said during a press conference.
He added that besides shale gas extraction, Shell also wants to create a chain of petrol stations on the main roads to Kyiv, Donetsk, and Dnipropetrovsk.
As reported, during the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2011, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said that Shell was planning to start shale gas production in Ukraine.
"I’m waiting for you to take effective actions to start searching for gas on the border between Kharkiv and Donetsk regions and, of course, extracting it," President Yanukovych said during a meeting with Shell CEO Peter Voser.
