The Promise and Peril Of China's Shale Gas

摘要

In China there's a giddy feeling that the next energy gold rush is about to begin. Beneath the mountains of Sichuan province, the deserts of Xinjiang, and elsewhere, China contains twice the shale-gas reserves as the U.S., says the U.S. Energy Information Administration. China's national planners enthusiastically back boosting natural gas production, which accounts for just 4 percent of the country's total energy mix now. The government wants to double that share by 2015. "There's a lot of exuberance," says Zhou Xizhou, who leads the research firm IHS Cera's China Energy practice. "In Beijing, if you work in energy, you probably receive a shale-gas conference notice every week."