Read an interesting news item earlier today in The Financial Express about India’s dependence on US for shale gas technology and know-how.
“The peculiarity of shale gas exploration is that it requires specialized technnology for horizontal drilling and hydro fracturing. US is the only country to have started commercial production of shale gas and its exploration technologies are very well-developed,” says Kalpana Jain, senior director, Deloitte Touche.
In my opinion, the US also possible is evolving in the shale gas technology and it will be optimistic to assume that they know a lot, but I do agree that relatively speaking, they are far ahead of any other nation in this domain.
For India, this again underscores the importance of US relationships and the importance of Obama visit. If shale gas indeed scales to the level many of the industry professionals expect it to, this could mean a lot to India whose reliance on LNG from other countries will come down dramatically, as India is said to have potential shale gas reserves, though there are not significant explorations that have been taken un as yet.