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Soaring domestic consumption and new environmental requirements ae spurring China’s E&P strategy to increase gas production and create a hub for oil-related services
In late December 2013, China announced that it had identified major gas hydrate resources in the northern part of the South China Sea.
Known as “flammable ice,” gas hydrates have the potential to be a major source of energy in the future. But the technology needed to economically get the gas that is frozen in ice-like crystals deep under the ocean is in its infancy.
China’s Ministry of Land and Resources said the gas hydrate resources are within a 55-km2 area in the Pearl River Mouth basin with estimated resources equivalent to 100 to 150 Bcm of natural gas, the size of a major conventional natural gas field. The Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey Bureau, a unit of the ministry, collected samples of high-purity gas hydrates during a 4-month period that involved surveys and drilling 23 wells in the waters off south China’s Guangdong province.
Two gas hydrate layers with a thickness of 15 to 30 m were found just below the seabed, which was at a depth of 600 to 1,000 m. “It marks a breakthrough in investigating the resource and proves that the Pearl River Mouth basin is rich in gas hydrates,” the ministry said. China is the fourth country to have collected samples of methane hydrates, after the US, Japan, and India.
China plans to collect more samples and increase research into how to develop the resource. To date, Japan has been the most successful in extracting gas from hydrates.
Soaring domestic consumption and new environmental requirements ae spurring China’s E&P strategy to increase gas production and create a hub for oil-related services
Shale gas resources are at the early stages of development in China, with these resources currently falling almost exclusively into the unproved and technically recoverable bracket, without any serious production. According to estimates made by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), China has the world’s largest unproved wet shale gas ...
