Invisible coal bed methane

Somebody thinks that “shale revolution” in North America has happened only due to increase of gas extraction from shale rock. But only 84 billion cubic meters of 265 billion, extracted from unconventional sources in the USA last year, fell on shale gas. The rest was extracted from tight sand and coal beds. At the same time, the latter provided about 50 billion cubic meters of gas, i.e. about 7% of the whole production of “blue fuel”. As the Ukraine is one of the first ten states with the largest and undeveloped resources of such methane, it would be wasteful not to use this resource as additional guarantee of the country’s energy safety.

World resources of coal bed methane exceed volumes of natural gas, concentrated in caps of oil and gas fields and make up about 260 trillion cubic meters. Russia, the USA, China, Australia, the Republic of South Africa, India, Poland and the Ukraine have the largest resources of coal bed methane. Potential resources of coal bed methane in the Ukraine are estimated at 12-25 trillion cubic meters. Calculated resources of this gas, occluded in coal beds of Donbass with thickness of over 0.3 meters, at the depth of 500-1800 meters, make up 1.4-2.5 trillion cubic meters, including 855 billion cubic meters at areas of the current wells. The density of estimated coal bed methane resources at coal-bearing strata areas are 90-107 million cubic meters/square km.