Shale game
China drastically reduces its ambitions to be a big shale-gas producer
IN 2012 China’s main planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, declared that the country would produce 60 billion-100 billion cubic metres of shale gas a year in 2020. It needed those forecasts to be accurate.
They weren’t. Wu Xinxiong, the director of China’s National Energy Administration, recently predicted that only 30 billion cubic metres a year will come on stream by 2020. That would barely meet 1% of China’s energy needs now, let alone in 2020.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "Shale game"
From the August 30th 2014 edition
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