Indonesia has vast resources of shale gas in Aceh, South Sumatra and East Kalimantan. The use of this energy could replace conventional gas, which will deplete soon.

However, drilling activities in shale gas projects have been the subject of ongoing debate for years. In addition, this project is urgent because Indonesia has been suffering from an energy crisis for the past decade, despite the country’s reputation as a large gas exporting country.

It is believed that shale gas projects could have some detrimental effects on the environment.

This is because the project needs a large volume of water to drill and fracture rock, according to a US Department of Energy report in 2012.

The report stated that the water requirement was about 2 to 4 million gallons (7 to 15 million liters). For example, Marcellus field, a shale gas field in Pennsylvania, needs 3 to 5 million gallons for the fracking phase only, according to exploreshale.org.

However, the water can come from either seawater or a fresh water source, from the ocean or a lake. As Indonesia is an archipelagic country with abundant sources of seawater, this is not a problem.

Indonesia is further blessed with many giant rivers such as the Mahakam in Kalimantan, Musi in Palembang and Peusangan in Aceh. Some oppose shale gas projects because they fear that gas leaking from the drill pipes along the wellbore would contaminate groundwater.

This would cause methane to pollute the groundwater and render it unusable until it is treated and purified. This can be caused by faulty methods, albeit rarely, and today’s technology can deal with such problems.

Some analysts believe that shale gas projects have a higher cost than conventional gas projects. Shale gas projects need more wells to extract gas and increase gas volume from impermeable or very tight rock while conventional gas projects need only a few wells as such projects work with porous rock.

Drilling also constitutes the largest proportion of the cost compared to other elements of the projects.

However, shale bedding can be easily identified using seismic and borehole data generated by geoscientists when the conventional gas is being explored.

Therefore, a company wanting to explore shale gas does not need to run a seismic survey anymore. In some areas, the cost of a seismic survey can be very high due to its complexity.

In onshore areas, an oil and gas company could spend US$10 million to produce a high quality subsurface image from acquiring and processing the seismic data while the average cost for drilling is $7 million.

Besides, general information about shale gas availability can be obtained when exploration companies successfully pump gas from a conventional gas reservoir. The gas found in the reservoir can be an indication of the presence of gas in the shale bed.

It is widely recognized amongst geoscientists that gas is formed initially in the shale formation before it migrates to reservoir bedrocks such as sandstone and limestone. Therefore, in areas of exploration, the oil and gas in reservoirs is known to have originated from the shale formation.

One of the many considerations that make this project viable is the availability of the infrastructure to process and store the resource.

It is an advantage that in Indonesia some of the identified shale gas fields are located in gas-rich provinces such as Aceh and East Kalimantan where the infrastructure has already been established.

However, in Arun, some tanks are no longer being used due to the depletion of gas supplies from surrounding gas fields. The tanks will be useless in the future and therefore can be used for shale gas purposes. In fact, no modifications are needed for the tanks before filling them with shale gas.

Apart from the plants and the tanks, Indonesia also has thousands of kilometers of gas pipelines. Some of those are owned by Pertamina with a total length of 32,647.7 km, according to the company in 2014, in some parts of Indonesia.

The pipeline networks are connected directly from the gas field to industrial plants as seen in Arun-Belawan with a length of 344 km. The pipelines can add to shale gas projects’ feasibility as they reduce the cost of gas transportation.

It has been projected that many downstream plants will grow significantly if shale gas projects are successfully developed.

Revenue from the plants would give a significant amount of income.

Furthermore, shale gas projects would create a potential gas market in Southeast Asia regions. It is projected that gas demand will reach a peak of 14 billion cubic feet (bcf) per day while the supply will be only half of that in 2020, according to Wood Mckenzie, cited by Hermantoro in 2015.

All in all, shale gas projects in Indonesia need to be started soon or, at the very least, the study of shale gas should be initiated by the government through a national company to anticipate the upcoming high increase in energy demand.

Without disregarding environmental issues, Indonesia should pay serious attention to this project as energy shortages may occur in the coming years.