Shale Gas Find in China Difficult to Develop - PetroChina

PetroChina says shale in China may be difficult to develop after a shale gas discovery in China's Sichuan province will be difficult to convert to commercial production.

The comment was made by PetroChina vice-chairman and president Zhou Jiping at the World Petroleum Congress in Doha, Qatar.

"We have made a discovery already," Zhou said. "The problem is how to make the production stable, how to increase the production, this needs technology."

Zhou said that Chinese geological conditions were more difficult than in the United States, 

However he added that he was 'confident' that, in time, commercial shale gas production would commence.

Royal Dutch Shell, a partner of PetroChina on shale gas exploration in a Sichuan block, was reported to have found shale gas there earlier this week.

Chairman of state-controlled China Petroleum & Chemical (Sinopec) Fu Chengyu predicted that China's shale gas production would surpass that of the United States within a decade.

A U.S. Energy Information Administration report in April said China had the largest shale resources in the world at 1,275 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of technically recoverable shale gas resources.

PetroChina's Zhou cautioned against reading too much into such statistics.

"Resources are not equal to reserves," he said, using the industry term for established amounts of oil and gas.

He added that stronger tectonic movement in China meant existing techniques may not be applicable, and that there was a need to "speed up innovation".

PetroChina has other challenges, with the location of its find being much drier than U.S. shale gas provinces, requiring large volumes of water to fracture or "frack" the shale formations and release the gas.  Development would also be slowed given Sichuan province's dense population.