Greatwall Drills Shale Gas Well in Guizhou
Greatwall Drilling Company, a subsidiary of Chinese state CNPC, November 29 drilled its first shale gas well in the Guizhou province, CNPC said December 6.
Greatwall is drilling the well on behalf of Guizhou Wujiang Energy and Natural Gas Development Company, which plans to achieve shale gas production capacity of 500mn m3/yr by 2020, 1.2bn m3/yr by 2022 and 3bn m3/yr by 2025, CNPC said.
With demand for gas increasing due to government’s coal to gas switching policy, Asia’s biggest economy is looking to exploit its vast shale gas reserves. Earlier this year, China’s natural resources ministry said the country’s technically recoverable shale gas reserves increased by 62% year on year to reach 916.8bn m3 by end-2017.
In April, WoodMac said it expects Chinese shale gas production to almost double from 2017 to reach 17bn m3 in 2020; at present the major producing fields are Sinopec's Fuling in the Chongqing region, and PetroChina's Changning-Weiyuan and Zhaotong projects in the mountainous Sichuan Basin.