Companies looking for shale gas in Poland are progressing much slower than expected, blaming bureaucracy and uncertainty regarding future tax burdens.

To this day, they have made only 30 vertical drillings, seven fracturing operations, and just two horizontal drillings, according to data from the Ministry of Environment, as reported by Rzeczpospolita.

That’s definitely not enough to launch shale gas production on a large scale within the next two or three years, as is hoped for by Treasury Minister Mikołaj Budzanowski, wrote Rzeczpospolita, citing experts' opinions.

In order to assess Poland’s shale gas deposits more precisely, at least 100 drillings need to be made, experts say. However, only six are currently being carried out.

The ministry is staying calm and says that investors have pledged to start another 21 drillings by December.

Industry players have doubts about whether this will happen, though. “We still do not know what legal regulations will be introduced, especially concerning tax burdens. No one will invest huge amounts of money in exploration when it is impossible to estimate whether the extraction will be profitable at all,” said Tomasz Maj, vice president of Talisman Energy Polska, a company which owns three shale gas concessions in Poland.

Poland A.M.