China quietly cut its 2020 goals for shale gas, a goal that was so ambitious that few took the number seriously.

The goal – to ramp up from zero commercial production of shale gas to 60-80 billion cubic meters by 2020 – was met with skepticism both inside and outside China when first announced. Now, the country is back stepping a bit, cutting that goal to 30 billion cubic meters by the end of the decade and combining it with coal bed methane (CBM). While natural gas output is growing at a fast clip in China (production in the first half of 2014 was up 7.5% from a year earlier), China produced a total of 116 billion cubic meters of natural gas last year, from all forms of extraction. Notably, the announcement came via a statement by the head of China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) Wu Xinxiong on an industry website instead of an official statement on the NEA’s own site.

via China Shale Development and Shriking Expectations | The Energy Collective.