Unconventional Gas Demand In China Expected to Soar by 2020
China, which now relies on coal for around 70 percent of its energy use, will see rapid growth in the consumption of unconventional gas including coalbed methane, shale gas and flammable gas in the next decade, a senior expert said on Monday.
The country's consumption of coalbed methane is expected to be 23 billion cubic meters (cu m) in 2020, which would account for 0.7 percent of its energy mix, Zhang Hongtao, chief engineer at the Ministry of Land and Resources, told an energy conference on Monday.
As for shale gas, the country's annual use is expected to be 15 billion cu m by 2020, 0.45 percent of total energy consumption, Zhang said at the 2010 China International Energy Forum.
China has also commenced the exploration and development of flammable gas both onshore and offshore, he added. China is currently at the preliminary stage in the use of these unconventional gases, but Zhang said these clean energies will become "effective substitutes" for natural gas.
China's production of coalbed methane now stands at 1 billion cu m annually, compared with 70 billion cu m in the United States. China has just started its development of shale gas. Development of unconventional gas, together with natural gas, fits well with the country's move to use more clean energy to fuel its economy, said Zhang. The country's natural gas consumption has seen an average annual growth of 16 percent from 2000 to 2009.
Use of natural gas now accounts for 3.8 percent of total energy consumption, according to Zhang. Natural gas is expected to account for 9 percent of the nation's total energy mix by 2020, Zhang said.
Use of green energy is essential to China's energy growth sustainability and its move to combat climate change, said Wang Tao, chairman of the Chinese National Committee for World Petroleum Council. More international cooperation is expected in the area, he said. China's three oil majors, PetroChina, Sinopec and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), have all tapped into the area as part of their moves to develop green energy.
The country's largest oil producer PetroChina said earlier it aims to produce 500 million cu m of shale gas by 2015. Sinopec said in May that it plans to increase its annual unconventional gas output to 2.5 billion cu m by 2015.
Development of unconventional oil and gas would become an important growth engine for the company's business in the next decade, according to company executives.
CNOOC last week agreed to pay $1.08 billion to buy a stake in a shale oil and gas project in the United States. The company will buy a 33.3 percent interest in US company Chesapeake Energy Corp's Eagle Ford shale project in southern Texas. The transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year, said a company statement.
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