Fracking could unlock 140bn barrels of oil worldwide, says report

The contentious drilling process known as "fracking", blamed by some for causing earthquakes in the US, could unlock nearly 140bn barrels of new global oil supplies, an amount equivalent to Russia's known reserves, says a study.

Countries such as Iran, Russia, Mexico and China stand to gain most from exploiting techniques used by modern-day wildcatters in America's shale revolution to breathe life into their ageing oil and gasfields, according to analysis by IHS, the research company.

Its study raises the prospect of substantial new supply sources in coming years if the technology developed to extract hard-to-access reserves in the US is used to boost recovery from older assets elsewhere. Some two-thirds of the extra recoverable oil would be produced in the Middle East and Latin America, IHS has estimated.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure into rocks deep underground to open up tiny fissures, allowing oil and gas to flow more freely to the wellhead. Horizontal drilling - sinking a well a mile or more straight down, then a mile or more sideways - has made it possible to expose a greater area of resource-bearing rock.

Combined with horizontal drilling, fracking has contributed to a boom in US output, with companies using technological advances to cut costs and improve productivity. But it is less widely used elsewhere, in part owing to environmental opposition but also the need for specialist equipment.

In the UK, more densely populated than the US, drillers hoping to "frack" shale gas reserves have met public wariness amid concern over the risk of minor earth tremors - which can be triggered by injecting waste water back underground - and the noise and disruption from transporting materials to and from sites.

Susan Farrell, vice-president of upstream energy research at IHS, said it had been "surprised at the impressive potential for increased recovery using these unconventional techniques" outside the US.

IHS says as much as 141bn barrels could be unlocked from known fields outside North America, with 135bn of these in plays likely to require fracking. As much as 40bn of these barrels lie in Iran, where the government is hoping to attract foreign investment if and when sanctions are lifted following a deal on its nuclear ambitions.

Mexico, which is opening its energy sector to foreign investment, follows with 14bn of potentially recoverable barrels, Russia with 12bn and China 6bn.

IHS has examined more than 170 mature oil plays worldwide and three fields in France, Tunisia and China where operators have revived old assets with new technologies. In France, where fracking is not allowed, the Saint Martin de Bossenay field near Paris, abandoned in 1996, has been redeveloped with horizontal drilling, boosting its rate of oil recovery from 40 to 44 per cent and swelling its reserves by 1m barrels, or about 10 per cent.

According to its analysis, the fields that could benefit from the new technologies are relatively evenly distributed across the world. The other top 10 countries, each with more than 4bn in additional resources, are the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, Libya and Venezuela.

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