CNPC Acquires Shell 20% Shale Gas Project

On February 2, it was reported that China's largest oil and gas producer, China Petroleum, said it had completed the acquisition of a 20% interest in Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum Group's Groundbirch shale gas project in Canada.

The international oil and gas prices remain high, and the unconventional oil and gas resources such as shale gas, tight gas, and oil sand in China will become an effective complement to traditional oil and gas resources, and have become one of the three major oil company's important strategic directions for future development. Chinese oil companies have focused on the development of unconventional resources such as shale gas and coalbed methane.

Recently, the three major oil companies have been accelerating the search for shale gas development at home and abroad.

PetroChina layout shale gas

China Petroleum spokesman Mao Zefeng said that the above transaction has been approved by the Chinese and Canadian governments and will be delivered on February 1. Shell will still hold 80% of the project and act as an operator.

“PetroChina hopes that through this cooperation, it will be able to accumulate more experience in shale gas technology and related development, production and management.” He said that the Groundbirch shale gas project is located in northeastern British Columbia, Canada and is currently being produced on a small scale. Among them.

However, details such as the transaction price were not disclosed. Earlier media reports said that PetroChina paid Shell more than one billion U.S. dollars in this transaction.

In addition, on December 8th, 2011, CNPC has drilled about 20 wells in the shale area in southern Sichuan, and the preliminary results can also be considered optimistic. At this stage, the average daily output per well is more than 10,000 cubic meters, but the exact scale of potential reserves is still being assessed.

According to reports, CNPC has three blocks of shale gas exploration in the Sichuan Basin: Changning, Weiyuan, and Fushun-Yongchuan blocks. The Changning-Weiyuan block is a national-level shale gas pilot test area. The total area is 6,567 square kilometers; Fushun-Yongchuan block is a cooperation zone between PetroChina and the Dutch Shell.

Some analysts said that CNPC is gradually accelerating the development and layout of shale gas at home and abroad.

The three major oil companies compete

In recent days, in addition to PetroChina, Sinopec and CNOOC have also deployed shale gas fields. Shale gas exploration and development is one of China's important resource strategic plans. The three major domestic oil companies have ranked it as the first unconventional oil and gas resource strategy.

On January 5, Sinopec Investment announced the acquisition of five German sharks in Nebraska, Mississippi, Utica, Ohio, Utica, Michigan, and Tuscaloosa for US$2.2 billion. One-third of the equity of oil and gas assets.

At the same time, Sinopec East China Bureau and CNOOC also jointly explored shale gas.

Some energy experts pointed out that for Sinopec, the unconventional oil and gas resources will be an important supplement to the future expansion of its upstream business. Shale oil and gas is an important breakthrough for Sinopec to enter unconventional oil and gas resources. In 2012, it should have greater actions on unconventional oil and gas resources, but Sinopec needs to make more efforts to break the bottleneck of unconventional oil and gas technology.

In recent years, with the rapid development of China's economy, the gap in energy supply is increasing, and alarms of “electricity shortage”, “oil shortage”, and “gas shortage” are frequently heard throughout the country. Wang Dun, head of the equipment division of Sinopec Petroleum Engineering Management Department, said in an interview with reporters that conventional oil and natural gas currently appears to have limited resources, and unconventional oil and gas such as shale gas will become an alternative energy source in the future.