Sinopec's shale gas development achievements during the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period and outlook for the future

During the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, Sinopec went full steam ahead with oil and gas exploration and development to ensure national energy security for China.With goals to speed up the development of the Silurian marine shale gas, achieve breakthroughs in the exploration of continental and transitional shale gas, and get prepared for shale gas development in new strata of new areas, Sinopec has exerted great efforts to the integration of exploration with development and geology with engineering as well as the innovation of key technologies.The Thirteenth Five-Year has witnessed a series of achievements made by the company, such as the rapid development of the Fuling gas field, the largest shale gas field outside North America; the successful assessment of the Weirong shale gas field, the first deep shale gas field in China; the discovery of China's first economically viable normal-pressure shale gas field; the identification of five potential deep and normal-pressure shale gas pay zones with resource up to 100 billion cubic meters, and the breakthroughs in the exploration of the Jurassic continental shale, the Permian marine shale as well as other new strata in the Middle Yangtze region.Equipped with a deeper geological understanding of shale gas, Sinopec has upgraded its knowledge of enrichment mechanism of deep and normal-pressure shale gas, built its own EOR tool box for marine shale, worked out technologies for developing shales deeper than 3 800 m and formed cost-effective approaches for normal-pressure shale gas development, which as a whole have successfully spurred the company's growth of shale gas reserves and output and facilitated its leap-forward shale gas industry as well as maintained its leading role in the country's shale gas development.In the future, Sinopec will focus its shale gas development on deep, normal-pressure and new formations in and around the Sichuan Basin and its periphery, strengthen its research on the enrichment mechanisms and fundamental development theories of different shale gas types, and develop key technologies.For the "Fourteenth Five-Year" plan, Sinopec plans to establish a shale gas productivity of a trillion cubic meters in the Fuling area, continue with its exploration activities in deep, normal-pressure shale, and other new strata for gas, and realize more commercial discoveries of shale gas of diverse types and higher growth of shale gas reserves and production. © 2021, OIL & GAS GEOLOGY Editorial Board. All right reserved.