Poland’s richest man Jan Kulczyk is to invest in tight gas which has been successfully extracted by British Aurelian Oil&Gas in western Poland.

The move comes after Aurelian Oil&Gas managed to extract tight gas, which is by nature hard to extract from the ground, by using horizontal drilling and innovative multiple-fracturing technology that has already revolutionised the natural gas market in the US.

In 2007, the company started drilling the first Trzek-1 horizontal well near the city of Poznan. At the end of 2010, the Trzek-2 horizontal well was drilled.

“While the first well provided just 7.5 million cubic feet per day, the second managed to produce 17 million cubic feet per day on initial production and is to be put on a 30-day test,” Pawel Chalupka from Energia Zachod, a subsidiary company to Aurelian Oil&Gas told Gazeta Wyborcza. Meanwhile, the Trzek-3 horizontal well has also started drilling.

It is estimated that the Siekierki structure can flow up to 10 billion cubic metres of tight gas, a lot when compared to total gas deposits in Poland, which stand at an estimated 140 billion cubic metres. The company hopes to extract 700 million cubic metres a year from the wells near Poznan.

If Energia Zachod is granted concessions for mass extraction, Kulczyk Holding, which belongs to the richest man in Poland, will sign a 10-year deal with it and will probably sell the gas to the state-owned Polish Petroleum and Gas Mining.

It is reported that the Kleszczewo and Kostrzyn counties near Poznan will also be able to grow rich on gas from Siekierki, as the investor will have to pay them an “extraction fee” which amounts to 5.63 zloty (1.4 euro) per 1,000 cubic metres. (mg/jb)