In July and August the Ministry of Environment granted 10 new licenses, enabling the exploration and development of unconventional hydrocarbon deposits.

 

Together with the new licenses, so far 103 permits were issued which usually allow the extraction of both conventional as well as unconventional deposits. Only two licenses enable the explorations of the tight gas unconventional deposits; they are held by Orlen Upstream and Aurelian Oil & Gas. The unquestioned leader on the Polish market is PGNiG which holds as much as 15 permits for shale gas explorations and all of them include conventional deposits. Marathon Oil ranks second and 3 Leg Resources ranks third. Over 30 additional applications for licenses are still awaiting their examination. 

 

 

Source: Rzeczpospolita Gospodarka Polski, page no.: 4, 2011-09-16, by: D.Barut-Andrachiewicz