Daqing Oilman has made another major exploration breakthrough: a high-yield shale oil well was born

Recently, a new exploration achievement in Daqing Oilfield has attracted the attention of the industry: the risk exploration well Ping'an 1 deployed in the Sichuan-Chongqing area has tested a high-yield oil flow of more than 100 cubic meters of oil and 100,000 cubic meters of gas, reaching a daily oil production of 112.8 cubic meters and a daily gas production of 114,500 cubic meters.

The development of shale oil and gas resources has become a new opportunity for the revitalization of Daqing Oilfield.

In recent years, driven by the state, China's shale oil and gas development has ushered in rapid growth.

Sichuan, Chongqing and other provinces, as the main concentration of shale gas fields in China, have brought together a number of oil and gas field companies, and a shale oil and gas development battle in the new century has begun.

Under PetroChina, there are Southwest oil and gas fields rooted in the Sichuan Basin, as well as Zhejiang Oilfield and Daqing Oilfield; In terms of Sinopec, in addition to the Southwest Petroleum Bureau in the Sichuan Basin, there are Jianghan Oilfield, Zhongyuan Oilfield and East China Oil and Gas Branch.

In addition, a number of private oil service engineering equipment enterprises have also mobilized resources to the Sichuan Basin to participate in the battle, which has promoted the improvement of local exploration and development infrastructure and a substantial increase in workload.

"Go out" and enter the southwest to develop shale gas. Since 2017, Daqing Oilfield has successively obtained the mining rights of Hechuan-Tongnan, Xichang-Xide, Yilong-Yingshan and Pingchang-Wanyuan of Southwest Oil and Gas Branch through the reform of mining rights and block circulation.

The Ping'an 1 well, located in the Pingchang structural belt of the low-grade structural area in northeast Sichuan Basin, was drilled on December 27, 2019 and completed on November 12, 2020, with a drilling depth of 3,980 meters and a horizontal section length of 817 meters.

Image from: Daqing Oilfield

China's conventional oil and gas resources have the characteristics of "poor oil and little gas", but the recoverable resources of shale gas rank first in the world.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Natural Resources, in 2019, the new proven geological reserves of shale gas in China were 764.424 billion cubic meters, a year-on-year increase of 513.1%. The new reserves come from PetroChina's Changning shale gas field, Weiyuan shale gas field and Sun shale gas field in the Sichuan Basin, and Sinopec's Yongchuan shale gas field in the Sichuan Basin. PetroChina's three shale gas fields have added more than 100 billion cubic meters of proven geological reserves.

Data show that in 2018, China's shale gas production exceeded 10 billion cubic meters for the first time, and in 2020, it reached 20.04 billion cubic meters, an increase of 4.5 times during the past "13th Five-Year Plan" period. Shale gas accounts for more than 10% of domestic natural gas, becoming the main force in increasing domestic natural gas production.

The Songliao Basin, where the Daqing Oilfield is located, is also rich in shale oil resources.

At the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the discovery of Daqing Oilfield, Daqing Oilfield released four major scientific and technological achievements, one of which is the new progress of shale oil exploration and development in the northern part of the Songliao Basin. The battle for shale oil exploration has been listed as the first of the five major battles for oil and gas exploration in Daqing Oilfield.

As the main old industrial area in Northeast China, the Songliao Basin is facing the crisis of depletion of conventional oil and gas resources after more than half a century of exploitation, and it is urgent to open up new areas of resource replacement.

The discovery of shale oil has opened a new chapter in its future sustainable development.

Image from: Daqing Oilfield

Different from marine shale oil in North America, China's shale oil resources mainly belong to continental shale oil, and the Songliao Basin is one of the typical representatives.

In contrast, the exploration and development conditions of continental shale oil are more complex and technically difficult, and there are no successful experiences and large-scale commercialization cases that can be directly replicated at home and abroad.

Through years of scientific research, China has made a series of key theoretical and technological breakthroughs in view of the resource characteristics of the Songliao Basin.

At the National Geological Work Conference held at the beginning of this year, the China Geological Survey released data that during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the China Geological Survey of the Ministry of Natural Resources cooperated with the "Two Barrels of Oil" to carry out theoretical and engineering technical research on continental shale oil and gas geology, and the five wells deployed in five areas of the Songliao Basin for two new layers of the Cretaceous have achieved breakthroughs in industrial oil and gas flow. According to the evaluation, the shale oil geological resources of the Qingshankou Formation in the Songliao Basin are 7.5 billion tons, and the shale gas geological resources of the Shahezi Formation in the Lishu fault depression exceed 500 billion cubic meters, and the exploration and development prospects are very broad.

However, at the same time, it is also necessary to be soberly aware that China's shale oil and gas development is still facing many difficulties, such as weak basic research, low technical level, high development cost and a series of problems to be solved.

In the future, as traditional oil companies such as Daqing Oilfield invest more resources in the shale oil and gas field, oil service engineering equipment enterprises related to the industrial chain will usher in a favorable situation.

The shale oil and gas market is still in its infancy in China, containing a large number of new opportunities and uncertainties, which is attracting the attention of more and more enterprises.