News from IHS CERAWeek 2014: BHP sees world lagging U.S. in shale for foreseeable future

BHP Billiton expects the U.S. to maintain its lead in shale development for some time. “The shale-gas revolution is unlikely to go global quickly,” CEO Andrew Mackenzie said at the IHS CERAWeek energy conference in Houston. “We are unlikely to see gas replace coal globally at the scale and pace seen here in the U.S.”

Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have unlocked shale deposits of oil across the U.S., and drilling efficiency has helped boost rig yields to record volumes from the Permian to the Bakken play. The U.S. met 86% of its energy needs in the first 11 months of 2013, the highest level since 1986, data from the Energy Information Administration show.

Too many unknown factors make it “impossible to forecast” when the rest of the world will catch up to shale development in the U.S., Mackenzie said in an interview after his presentation.

“You don’t have anything like the complex gathering and distribution systems” in the U.S, he said. “It’s kind of tough to think how you could transport that to a part of the world which has not had a gas industry before.”

BHP holds more than 1.5 million acres in the Eagle Ford Shale and the Permian Basin of Texas, the Haynesville Shale of Louisiana and the Fayetteville Shale of Arkansas, according to a Dec. 10 presentation.

The U.S. holds the world’s second-largest amount of recoverable shale oil and the fourth-largest of shale gas, according to the EIA.

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