Chinese drillers find two massive shale oil & gas discoveries

State-controlled energy company China National Petroleum Corporation claims to have found a brace of fresh production of shale oil and gas that are two billion tonnes in size.

China has a large population and therefore, huge shale oil and gas production will help meet its energy needs. It is also importing oil and gas from different countries to meet its demand due to higher growth in the region.

Fuman, an oilfield located in the Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China, found one of the wells in their oil field. One billion tonnes of super-deep oil and gas apparently reside within it.

The well, which began drilling at a depth of over 27,900 feet (8,500 meters) and reached a 1,640-foot (550-meter) oil column, established a new basin record in both the deepest oil production and the highest oil column. By 2025, oil production is predicted to reach four million tonnes per year, while natural gas production is projected to reach 49.4 billion cubic feet (1.4 billion cubic meters).

Drilling oil fields is one of the most challenging tasks because most of the oil deposits are located below 26,000 feet (8,000 meters). With an estimated production of nearly two million tonnes since the beginning of 2021, the area’s yearly output climbed from 30,000 tonnes to 1.52 million tonnes between 2015 and 2020, with projected production for the year 2021 of approximately two million tonnes.

According to CNPC, a deposit in the Ordos Basin in the northwest of the country holds an estimated billion tonnes of shale oil.

Changqing Oilfield Co, a CNPC affiliate, made the discovery. In the past three years, they’ve made two other large finds. Chinese drillers discovered Shale oil in the Qingcheng region of Gansu Province two years ago, and the number now stands at 359 million tonnes. This last billion-ton oil discovery will be a key milestone in China’s oil-gas exploration history.