This is great news for Poland - and Europe:
Europe passed a “major milestone” on the way to starting commercial shale gas production as San Leon (SLE) Energy Plc said testing at one of its Polish wells was successful.
Natural gas flowed from the vertical Lewino well in a shale formation in the Baltic Basin in northern Poland at as much as 60,000 cubic feet per day during tests, Dublin-based San Leon, a natural-gas explorer backed by billionaire George Soros and Blackrock Inc., said today in a filing. The company will start drilling a more productive horizontal well no later than July, said Dennis McKee, the chief executive officer of United Oilfield Services Sp. z o.o., which worked on Lewino.
Countries including Poland, the U.K., Ukraine and Romania are keen to develop shale gas resources as a way to lower energy costs and reduce imports. Europe must get a grip on energy prices to protect growth and reduce the cost gap with the U.S., where a shale-gas revolution has cut prices, European Union Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger told a conference in Berlin on Jan. 21, via a link from Brussels.
“We’re confident we can show real commercial flow rates,” San Leon Chairman Oisin Fanning said in a telephone interview from London. “If you can prove the shale play in Poland, it will open up in other countries.” --
The results from the Lewino well are a “major milestone in the process of commercialization of shale gas in Poland,” McKee told reporters at a briefing in Warsaw. San Leon may bring the well to commercial production by October, after it conducts flow tests, he said. United Oilfield Services is the nation’s largest provider of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking.
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