There may be a boom in global shale gas production, but that doesn’t mean getting gas is easy.

Just ask Camarillo-based BNK Petroleum Inc., which despite a test failure at one of its wells in Poland and news of disappointing shale gas production from other companies in that country, is pressing ahead there.

“We’ve always said that not every shale play is going to work,” said BNK Chief Executive Wolf Regener. “But we believe we’ve narrowed our efforts to the best areas in Poland and we’re going to continue our efforts.”

BNK Petroleum formed three years ago when Calgary, Alberta-based Bankers Petroleum Ltd. decided to spin off its U.S. holdings. Most of the company’s revenue comes from oil and gas production in Alabama, Oklahoma and Mississippi. The company has since focused all its exploration efforts in Europe, acquiring acreage in Germany, Poland and Spain.

Analysts had viewed the Polish land as holding the greatest potential return, given estimates of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas reserves there. Almost all of this gas is trapped in rock layers and requires a controversial technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to get it to flow to the surface.

Fracking involves the injection of water, sand and trace amounts of chemicals at high pressure into rock formations. The technique dislodges oil or natural gas. Fracking is generating increased controversy in the United States because of concerns that the chemicals can contaminate nearby groundwater supplies.

In October, BNK announced that a $6.5 million test using fracking technology at a well near Lebork, Poland, had failed to achieve a flow of natural gas and that a redesign of the fracking process was necessary. As a result, any subsequent tests had to wait until after the winter season.

The company also announced that it was putting off tests on other wells in Poland until this spring.

At that time, BNK’s shares on the Toronto exchange tumbled 26 percent to $2.06 in Canadian dollars.

Exxon effect

As if that wasn’t enough for skittish investors, Exxon-Mobil Corp. announced at the end of last month that it was abandoning two shale gas exploratory wells it drilled last year in Poland because they didn’t produce sufficient amounts of natural gas. Because it was Irving, Texas-based giant ExxonMobil and not some small lightly capitalized company, analysts immediately questioned the accessibility of the trillions of cubic feet of natural gas beneath Poland. Some believe it could take a lot longer and cost a lot more for oil companies to retrieve the gas than originally anticipated.

“The unconventional shale market in Poland is not nearly as developed as that of the U.S.,” Gianna Bern, president of Brookshire Advisory and Research, a Chicago energy research and advisory company, told the Business Journal last week. “Besides the technological aspects, Poland does not yet have the infrastructure and abundance of water necessary for large-scale operations.”

Bern said exploration companies may either have to boost their up-front investment costs or readjust their anticipated gas yields.

As ExxonMobil announced it was abandoning the wells, BNK’s shares fell an additional 10 percent at the end of January to $1.77 a share in Canadian dollars. The plunge made BNK the third biggest loser on the LABJ’s stock index for that week.

Regener said ExxonMobil’s wells were in a different geological basin, so the abandonment of them doesn’t mean that the wells BNK has drilled or plans to drill will also turn out to be duds. He also noted that ExxonMobil hasn’t given up on Poland; last week, the oil giant announced plans to drill another six test wells in the country.

Nevertheless, BNK is diversifying its European ventures outside of Poland. In November, a subsidiary of the company was awarded a natural gas concession of 86,000 acres near Leon, Spain. And in December, the company was awarded 535,000 acres in Thuringia, Germany. The German concession is now BNK’s single largest holding in Europe.

Drilling in both Spain and Germany is expected to get under way by the end of this year.