The 14th Five-Year Plan is a period of great development of China's natural gas industry



Natural gas has great potential to increase production

As a relatively clean fossil energy, natural gas is considered to be the main growth point of China's energy structure adjustment and the main force of low-carbon transformation. Under the constraints of the two goals of "striving to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and striving to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060", the pace of clean and low-carbon transformation of China's energy structure will be accelerated, and the bridge role of natural gas in it will be further reflected.

Dai Jinxing pointed out that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, China's natural gas industry has three favorable conditions: "First, China's natural gas resources are rich and the proved rate is low, and it has the resource advantage of faster development of natural gas; Second, in recent years, China's natural gas output continues to grow, with a faster development of natural gas growth advantages; Third, the remaining recoverable reserves of natural gas in our country are increasing year by year, and we have the advantage of developing natural gas reserves faster."

It is understood that as of 2019, there are 10 countries with an annual output of more than 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the world, and China's annual output of natural gas is 176.17 billion cubic meters, ranking fifth. China's total recoverable natural gas resources reach 85 trillion square meters, ranking second in the world, but the cumulative proved recoverable natural gas reserves are only 7.36 trillion square meters, and the proved rate is only 8.6%, which is the lowest among the 10 countries. Compared with other countries, the United States has a proven rate of 74%, and Australia and Canada have the lowest proven rates of 18% and 29.7%, respectively.

In Dai Jinxing's view, even if calculated according to the proved rate of the two lowest countries abroad, China's future proved cumulative recoverable reserves are 15.4 trillion square meters and 25.4 trillion square meters, respectively, which is 2.1 times and 3.4 times of the proven cumulative recoverable reserves in 2019.

In addition, from the "eleventh Five-Year Plan" to the "thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, China's remaining recoverable reserves are strong and basically rising year by year, from more than 200 billion square meters in 2006 to more than 400 billion square meters in 2019, basically doubling, with the resource conditions to support the production increase of natural gas.

Dai Jinxing further pointed out that China's "12th Five-Year" average annual gas increase of 7.51 billion square meters, "13th Five-Year" average annual gas increase of 10.88 billion square meters, according to this trend, "14th Five-Year" period as long as the average annual gas increase of 12.2 billion square meters, China's annual gas production in 2025 can reach 250 billion square meters.

Important areas of unconventional gas production

Since there is a large potential to increase production, how should we do a good job in exploration and development to ensure increased storage and production?

Yang Zhi, research Institute of Petroleum and Gas Geology, Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development, pointed out that unconventional oil and gas will become a strategic resource for "stabilizing oil and increasing gas". It is understood that in the current proved oil and gas resources in China, the ratio of conventional and unconventional resources is 1:3, and in the remaining natural gas resources, unconventional gas is about 4 times that of conventional gas.

Ma Feng, Science and Technology consulting center of China Petroleum Exploration and Development Research Institute, also said that China's oil and gas industry has entered the conventional and unconventional stage, the proportion of complex gas reservoirs is getting higher and higher, and it is becoming more and more difficult to find high-quality large gas fields, which puts forward more innovative demand for exploration and development.

According to reports, China's "13th Five-Year" shale gas planning annual output of 21 billion square meters, to achieve 20.4 billion square meters, the completion rate of 95.4%, basically achieve the shale gas planning goals. Among them, petrochina will put into operation 962 Wells and produce 11.61 billion square meters of shale gas in 2020, and Sinopec will put into operation 733 Wells and produce 8.43 billion square meters of shale gas. From 2016 to 2020, the growth rate of shale gas production in China is 17%-42%, which is still in the early stage of exploration and development compared to North America, and has the development conditions for rapid production.

The "14th Five-Year Plan" of the Exploration Institute pointed out that the next key goal will be to attach equal importance to low-grade conventional and unconventional, and ensure the national oil and gas security and green low-carbon transformation and development. In the field of unconventional gas exploration and development, we will focus on shale gas, tight gas, coal-bed methane, underground coal-to-gas and other directions, break through the exploration and development theories and technologies of deep shale gas, non-marine shale gas, and underground coal-to-gas, and promote the "continental shale oil and gas revolution."

For the development of shale gas, Dai Jinxing also pointed out specific directions. He said that the shale gas found so far in China is sapropelic shale gas, no coal measure shale gas has been found, and the study of coal measure shale gas is of great significance. He pointed out that the coal-measure shale gas in Ordos Basin has good prospects and potential.

Technological innovation is essential

In fact, China has made great progress in shale gas exploration and development in recent years. Since the first shale gas survey well in China discovered shale gas in Sichuan in 2008, shale gas production began in 2012, and shale gas output exceeded 20 billion cubic meters in 2020, forming shale gas production bases such as Fuling, Weiyuan and Changning. The shale gas industry has developed steadily.

However, due to the constraints of formation, surface conditions, and technical service market maturity, China's shale gas exploitation is also facing many challenges.

Experts at the meeting pointed out that because the temperature of deep shale is as high as 140℃ and the difference of ground stress is greater than 20MPa, the existing technology and equipment are difficult to adapt to the temperature and pressure conditions, and some core key tools rely on imports; In addition, the full cost of shale gas is as high as 1000 yuan/one thousand thousand, 20% -30% higher than conventional natural gas, the initial production of gas Wells is generally 80,000 to 100,000 square meters/day, the decline rate is fast, the need to continue to drill Wells to maintain stable production, workload and investment pressure.

In this regard, the shale gas "14th Five-Year Plan" of the Exploration Institute pointed out that the production oriented, the technical ability and cost as the main evaluation indicators, the optimal construction team; Strengthen research on key core technologies, actively promote the construction of national shale gas science and technology major projects and deep development demonstration projects, and use technological innovation to drive high-quality development of shale gas business; Optimize resource allocation and production organization, plus