Russia has world’s largest shale oil resources, EIA says

PanARMENIAN.Net - Russia has the world’s largest identified shale oil resources, with the United States and China second and third, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Tuesday, June 11 citing data from various published studies, according to RIA Novosti.

Russia boasts 75 billion barrels of technically recoverable shale oil resources, followed by the United States with 58 billion barrels and China with 32 billion barrels, the EIA report says.

Russia’s richest shale oil source is the Bazhenov formation in West Siberia with total reserves estimated at 1.24 trillion barrels, of which only 74.6 billion barrels are currently considered as technical recoverable.

The top ten countries by shale oil reserves also include Argentina (27 billion barrels), Libya (26 billion barrels), Venezuela (13 billion barrels), Mexico (13 billion barrels), Pakistan (9 billion barrels), Canada (9 billion barrels) and Indonesia (8 billion barrels).

Global shale oil resources are estimated at 345 billion barrels, which represents about 10 percent of the world’s recoverable crude oil, the reports says.

Russia ranks only ninth by technically recoverable shale gas reserves with 5.7 trillion cubic meters - the top three countries are China, Argentina and Algeria.

Global shale gas resources are estimated at 145.98 trillion cubic meters or 32 percent of the world’s natural gas technically recoverable resources, the report said.

Currently, only the United States and Canada are producing shale oil and shale gas in commercial quantities.