China's Sichuan Basin adds over 100 billion cubic meters of deep shale gas fields

The reporter learned from the Sinopec News Office that Sinopec's "Deep Earth Engineering · Sichuan Chongqing Natural Gas Base" has made a major breakthrough. The newly discovered geological reserves of 124.588 billion cubic meters of Yongchuan shale gas field submitted by Sinopec Southwest Petroleum Bureau have been approved by the expert group of the Ministry of Natural Resources, marking the birth of another large-scale deep integrated shale gas field with a capacity of over 100 billion cubic meters in China. It will effectively support the construction of the Sichuan Chongqing 100 billion cubic meter production base and provide clean energy guarantee for the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

The Yongchuan shale gas field belongs to deep shale gas and is located in Yongchuan District, Chongqing. It is situated in the complex structural zone of southern Sichuan in the Sichuan Basin, with the main part buried at a depth greater than 3500 meters. In 2016, Southwest Petroleum Bureau achieved a major breakthrough in exploration by deploying the first pre exploration well, Yongye 1HF, in the area, thus discovering the Yongchuan shale gas field. In 2019, the newly discovered geological reserves of 23.453 billion cubic meters were approved by the expert group of the Ministry of Natural Resources. Subsequently, Sinopec continued to tackle the exploration and development difficulties in the central and northern regions of Yongchuan, and ultimately achieved the overall exploration of the Yongchuan shale gas field, with a total proven geological reserve of 148.041 billion cubic meters.

Innovative technology enables deep shale gas to be 'visible' and 'accessible'. The research team has collected a large amount of high-precision 3D seismic data of deep shale gas, organized multiple rounds of geological geophysical engineering integrated joint research, and developed new structural display mapping technology, high-precision imaging technology, etc., effectively solving the problems of "unclear visibility" and "inaccurate characterization" of deep shale gas. In addition, the research team has innovated the differentiated transformation ideas for deep shale gas and developed a strong support volume fracturing technology, allowing shale gas buried underground to continuously flow out along these three-dimensional channels, greatly improving the development efficiency of deep shale gas and significantly increasing the average economically recoverable reserves of a single well.