TLM

Polish power utility PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna SA (PGE.WA) has received informal offers from holders of shale concessions in Poland for commercial deliveries of natural gas as early as three years' time, PGE Chief Executive Tomasz Zadroga said Thursday.

The future availability and price of the fuel, whether from a liquefied natural gas terminal currently under construction on the Baltic coast, from a virtual reserve flow on the Yamal-Europe pipeline, or from shale rocks, is a factor determining on what fuel--coal or gas--PGE will base new power plants it plans to build.

"Certain consession holders say they can guarantee commercial deliveries of gas from shales in three years from Poland," Zadroga told TVN CNBC. "We're asking them for analyses, as these aren't formal offers."

He declined to specify which companies had made these offers.

Outside the U.S., Poland is the first place where companies are making a serious effort to develop shale gas.

Poland has recoverable shale-gas resources of 5.3 trillion cubic meters, equal to more than 300 years of the country's annual natural-gas consumption, the U.S. Department of Energy says in a report.

While testing is still being conducted on Poland's shale rock--which lies about four kilometers underground in a belt running from the Gdansk area of northern Poland diagonally southeast to the country's border with Ukraine--results so far already have whetted the appetite of energy companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), Chevron Corp. (CVX), Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO) and Talisman Energy Inc. (TLM.T TLM)--which have acquired exploration concessions--as well as oil field services giants such as Halliburton Co. (HAL), Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB), Baker Hughes Inc. (BHI) and Weatherford International Ltd. (WFT), which hope to work for them.

-By Marynia Kruk, Dow Jones Newswires; +48 22 447-2431; marynia.kruk@dowjones.com

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