BGS boosts UK’s shale oil stash
The UK’s Weald basin could hold almost 9 billion barrels of shale oil, according to British Geological Survey (BGS) data, which, if proved up, has the potential to triple the country’s crude reserves
A new BGS report, released on 23 May, said the Weald basin, in southeast England, could hold between 2.2 billion barrels and 8.57 billion barrels of shale oil, pegging the resource’s central estimate at 4.4 billion barrels. The study, The Jurassic shales of the Weald Basin: geology and shale oil and shale gas resource estimation, was commissioned by the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The area studied covers 10,825 square km, extending from Salisbury, in Wiltshire, western England, to the Kent town of Ashford, in the east. The report added no significant volumes of shale gas was discovered in the basin, because the shale is not thought to have reached the geological mat

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