PetroChina is boosting its shale gas stockpile with an additional 741 billion cubic meters of the reserve at its Sichuan depot. This, on top of another 358 million tons of reserves at its Qingcheng oil facility as part of the Chinese oil giant's breakthrough explorations.
In a stock exchange filing released to Reuters, the state-run energy conglomerate disclosed that it had made undertaken a huge leap forward in advancing its shale oil and gas venture, which had enhanced its reserves.
PetroChina's total current deposits in the Sichuan region alone exceeds 1 trillion cubic meters of gas. Shale gas and oil are considered as an alternative solution to China's oil and energy woes, which ultimately results to demand outpacing supply. However, surpassing the growth of US shale has not been so easy.
Based on the 2015 figures provided by the Energy Information Administration, China has a recoverable shale gas stockpile of more than 1,000 trillion cubic feet, making it the country with the largest reservoir of shale gas in the world. Argentina is at second, with just around 800 trillion cubic feet. China producing the same volume as that of the US at the moment seems very unlikely to happen.
China pumped 6.7 billion cubic meters of shale gas in 2015, which equated to 5.6 percent of its total production in 2013. Chinese energy firms have set a goal of producing 30 billion cubic meters per year from shale, which translates to nearly 50 percent of its total gas consumption in 2008.
Although production numbers were moderate as of 2013, China's volume of technically recoverable shale gas has been projected to be 31.7 trillion cubic meters - the largest of any country in the world. China is one of only three nations (including Canada and the US) to produce shale gas in big commercial quantities in the same year.
Investment in alternative gas and oil exploration has been steadily growing in the past few years and the results are impressive. In the first weeks of this year, PetroChina announced it had reached a positive daily production level from its new shale oil facility in the western outskirts of China. A few months later, China National Petroleum Corporation bared it had made an important oil discovery in the northern portion of the country.
China's government-controlled energy companies are putting in more work - and capital - on local oil and gas exploration and recorded multi-year highs this year, responding to Beijing's call to strengthen energy supply as import dependence rises in the midst of deepening trade friction with the US.
