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This week PetroChina discovered shale gas in China’s Sichuan province. How significant is this find for China’s energy supply and how does it compare to shale and natural gas reserves in other countries?

Chart of the week takes a look behind the figures to get a better idea.

Let’s leave aside the costs of extraction. Not all gas reserves are created equal. And we will also avoid the debate on fracking – which is controversial to say the least, and may be banned in several countries.

Purely on a reserves basis, how big a deal is shale gas in China? Well, it’s the country with the largest technically recoverable shale gas reserves in the world and, of course, is the country with the largest energy consumption (in absolute terms, that is – in per capita terms China is still way behind the US). (* UPDATE: this paragraph has been changed. See below for correction details).

So shale could be a big source of energy for China. But how does it compare to natural gas reserves?

The chart below shows the countries with the largest shale gas resources, compared to their natural gas reserves, with the top four natural gas producers included for comparison.

Russia has the most natural gas in the world – nearly a quarter of the world’s reserves, in fact. But China’s shale gas would put it between Russia and Iran, the country with the second-highest reserves. Shale could be very big.

In fact, shale could be big for lots of countries – the shale reserves of the US, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, Australia, Canada and Libya are all potentially bigger than the fourth-biggest country for natural gas, Saudi Arabia.

Shale is also a big deal for these countries compared to natural gas. For countries with shale gas resources, only the Netherlands and Venezuela have bigger natural gas reserves than shale. Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves according to some estimates, so shale is a distant third to oil and natural gas anyway.

But for many emerging markets – China, Argentina, Mexico and South Africa especially – the scale of the shale reserves is, potentially, a game changer. If you can extract it.

Sources: EIA, CIA World Factbook

* The original version of this post said that the shale gas reserves were proven – this was incorrect, it should have said technically recoverable, as per the EIA website. For a full explanation, see the paragraph “Technically Recoverable Resource” on the EIA website. The chart was also changed to reflect this.

Related reading:
PetroChina finds shale gas reserves, FT
Malaysia: Petronas strikes $1.1bn shale gas deal in Canada, beyondbrics
Shale reserves: Gas seen as bridge between old and new forms of power, FT