PetroChina May Take Five Years to Unlock China's Shale Resources

PetroChina may take five years to figure out ways to unlock China’s shale gas resources.

“We still have a long way to go in turning possible shale resources into recoverable reserves,” Zhou Mingchun, chief financial officer at China’s largest oil and gas company, said in an interview to Bloomberg.

Although China is estimated to hold world’s largest shale gas reserves, the country is yet to produce the gas commercially due to lack of technology and tougher geology.

China holds 25.1 trillion cubic meters of exploitable shale reserves, the country’s Ministry of Land and Resources said March 1.

Zhou expects the company to take three to five years to develop a full-fledged method to overcome various challenges, Bloomberg said.

PetroChina’s parent, China National Petroleum Corp., tapped Royal Dutch Shell for help in drilling the nation’s first horizontal well last year. Furthermore, PetroChina agreed to buy a 20 percent stake in Shell’s Groundbirch shale-gas project in Canada.

China is looking to achieve the kind of success the US has experienced in exploiting its shale gas resources. The US has seen a boom in natural gas production in recent years, mainly due to rise in shale gas production.