IGas, one of the leading producers of onshore hydrocarbons in the UK, has said that UK shale gas reserves could be up to 20 times greater than originally thought following the completion of its studies of shale under its 100% owned licences in the North West of England.

The estimates cover an area of 300 square miles. IGas’ proposed drilling programme which will commence in Q4 2013, in the North West, is at an advanced stage. Long lead items (e.g.wellheads, casings etc.) have now been ordered and negotiations with drilling and related service companies are well advanced.

Commenting on the findings, Andrew Austin, IGas CEO said:

“The announcement of the gas in place volumes of up to ca. 170Tcf in our North West acreage follows the completion of a very thorough study by the IGas Technical team and supports our view that these licences have a very significant shale gas resource with the potential to transform the company and materially benefit the communities in which we operate.

The planned drilling programme, commencing later this year, will further refine these estimates and advance our understanding of this shale basin. We will in due course carry out further analysis and reinterpretation of existing seismicand subsurface data to evaluate the potentially prospective Shale resources in the East Midlands and WealdBasin licence areas.”

Shale gas exploration has potentially significant impacts for the UK’s water resources –the fracking process used to extract the gas involves pumping water, chemicals and sand at high pressure into rock to release it. The drilling and hydraulic fracturing of a horizontal shale gas well on average requires 3.5 million gallons of water.

However, supporters say that in comparison with other major forms of energy production, the production of shale requires only a fraction of the water required to produce energy from coal and nuclear sources.