Poland’s shale gas industry appears to be collapsing, just four years after the US government predicted that its reserves were abundant enough to fuel the country for the next three centuries.

Concessions for exploratory shale drilling have nearly halved in the last year from 58 to just 32, according to a new Polish government manifest published to little fanfare on the environment ministry’s website this week.

With rockbottom oil prices continuing to erode global fracking hopes, Chevron and ConocoPhillips this year joined Exxon, Talisman and Marathon in pulling out of the east European country.

“The shale gas story in Poland is dead,” said Antoine Simon, a campaigner at Friends of the Europe. “It is simply not working. The geology is not favourable and I would expect the concessions to continue to decrease. Unless gas prices rise dramatically, it is now just a matter of years before all of Poland’s shale projects are stopped.”

In a setback for the industry, even the state-backed gas firm PGNiG has now dispatched seven of its 11 shale gas concessions, holding onto just four licenses in northern Poland.

A company spokesman said that the shale fields had been abandoned because of geological and technological problems, as well as cost over-runs. But the firm rejected talk of a crisis in the gas industry.

“A 50% drop does not necessarily mean an industry collapse,” the official said. “If a company does not see a chance for business success in a particular field, it simply allocates resources elsewhere. For PGNiG, shale gas exploration has been one of many options.”

Just four years ago, Poland’s president Donald Tusk predicted commercial shale drills in the country by 2014.

“We think that chances are small that commercial production of shale gas in Poland could begin any time soon,” the PGNiG spokesman said.

Poland was initially seen as a standard bearer for the ‘shale gas revolution’ in Europe and the retreat by fossil fuel firms there will be closely watched in the UK, where David Cameron’s government is trying to fast-track exploratory drills in the face of local resistance.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has estimated that the UK has 26 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of technically recoverable shale gas. But in 2011, the EIA also posited that Poland possessed “some of the most favourable shale gas resources in Europe” which it estimated at 187 tcf.

Poland's shale gas revolution evaporates in face of environmental protests

The Polish Geological Survey later revised these figures down by a factor of ten.Disappointing test well results followed, as permitting delays and determined environmental protests stoked industry frustrations. At the same time, investment was hit by falling prices for renewable energies, coal and oil.

Polish government tax breaks and changes to environmental laws did little to alter the picture. Today, the country still faces a case in the European Court of Justice for breaching EU law in permitting shale drills at depths of up to 5,000m.

In the US, where the shale gas boom began, the industry is also increasingly being seen as an unprofitable venture, but it is vastly more developed than its European cousin.

“Expectations about the Polish shale project were mainly based on North America’s experiences,” said Marcin Zieba, the director of the Polish exploration and production industry organisation. “Unfortunately, our local reality turned out to be completely different.”