While Australia is the best part of 10-years behind the U.S. in terms of exploring for and developing its unconventional oil and gas potential it is a country which featured prominently in a 2011 analysis of world shale gas potential by the U.S. Energy Information Agency.
But China likely has even more shale gas potential than the U.S., with the U.S. Energy Information Administration figuring on 1, 250 trillion cubic feet of recoverable shale gas in China.
Technically recoverable shale gas potential in Australia was put by the EIA at 390 trillion cubic feet of gas, about 45% of the 862tcf estimated for the U.S., but roughly double the estimate for France and Poland and 9-times the estimate for Ukraine which recently attracted an investment by Royal Dutch Shell.