Majority of Poles 'back' tapping shale gas

Seventy-three percent of Poles back tapping into their country's apparently vast shale gas reserves despite warnings that production poses a serious environmental risk, a survey said on Wednesday. Just four percent of Poles oppose shale gas production while 23 percent have no opinion on the matter, according to a survey by the independent Warsaw-based CBOS pollsters conducted August 18-24 on a random representative sample of 1,051 adults. Some 56 percent of those polled have no objection to shale gas being tapped near their homes while 21 percent said they would not welcome the development. Forty-three percent of respondents believe shale gas extraction poses no threat to the environment, while 16 percent are convinced it is harmful. Forty-one percent have no opinion. Poland is pushing ahead with moves to exploit reserves thought to contain some 5.3 trillion cubic metres of natural gas potentially covering Poland's estimated needs for up to 300 years. If the estimate proves right, it would allow Poland to reduce its reliance on coal for electricity production as well as its dependence on Russian gas supplies, which cover 40 percent of its needs. Earlier this month, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said his country planned to begin commercial shale gas production as of 2014, insisting the technologies involved were safe. Brussels has said it intends to draft European Union-wide rules on tapping shale gas reserves, in the face of environmental concerns. Moves to tap gas from shale -- sedimentary rock containing hydrocarbons -- have sown deep divisions in Europe amid concerns that hydraulic fracturing used in its extraction is environmentally risky. France, for example, has frozen extraction projects and slapped a legal ban on so-called "fracking". Little known even five years ago, tapping shale-gas is seen as having the potential to change global energy markets, for example by doubling the estimated reserves of the United States.