Water scarcity footprint assessment for China's shale gas development

Abstract

As the largest holder of shale gas resource estimates, China is actively promoting its shale gas development to steer its transitions to a low carbon energy system. The production of shale gas usually needs a large amount of water. According to our estimates, the direct water consumption is about 9700–37600m3/well, and the indirect water consumption is around 32,400–71,100 m3/well. Such a large amount of water consumption could have a serious impact on local human and ecosystem water consumption since China is a country with scarce and unevenly distributed water resources. Water scarcity footprint (WSF) of shale gas production in Chinese provinces is assessed to understand the impacts of shale gas production on local water consumption for other sectors. The results show that the average water pressure for shale gas production in China is higher compared with that of the U.S.. The average WSF in China is 16,574 m3world. eq/106m3 gas while the WSF in the Barnett shale region in the U.S. is only around 2000 m3world. eq/106m3 gas. 13 of 31 provinces have even higher WSF than the national average, in which the amount of shale gas resources accounts for about 20% of China's total. Shale gas exploitation in these 13 provinces might not be suitable or must be cautious from the perspective of WSF. The remaining 18 provinces have lower WSFs than the national average. A sustainable way for extracting shale gas in these 18 provinces needs to comprehensively consider WSF, the scale and speed of exploitation and the amount of local shale gas recoverable reserves.