The government said that Chevron would spend $350 million on the exploratory phase of the project and that the total investment could reach $10 billion.
“Over five years, Chevron says it hopes to conduct seismic surveys and to drill exploratory wells on a 1.6 million-acre area called the Oleska Block, which is heavy with shale rock deposits. The effort is likely to include hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of the shale rock to see if oil and gas can be produced in commercially viable amounts. Because of the risks that environmentalists say fracking poses to groundwater and geological stability, it is out of favor in much of Europe,” The New York Times reports.
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A Chevron spokesman, Cameron van Ast, declined to comment on investment figures.
The deal with Chevron and one that Ukraine signed this year with Royal Dutch Shell “will let Ukraine satisfy its gas needs completely and, under the optimistic scenario, export energy resources by 2020,” President Viktor F. Yanukovich said on his website Tuesday.
Like other Eastern European countries, Ukraine has much to gain if it can create an environment in which energy companies can successfully explore for oil and gas.
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