China discovers a series of large oil and gas deposits
China's state-owned oil and gas giant CNOOC has announced the discovery of what Chinese media are calling a large deposit of coal seam methane, located in deep seams, with proven geological reserves of more than 100 billion cubic meters of gas. natural. A discovery of this magnitude represents CNOOC's second major onshore gas discovery, which is being heralded as an important step toward expanding China's unconventional production.
The discovery also represents the country's first deep coal seam methane deposit. The gas field discovered in Shenfu is located in the north of the country, in Yulin, with coal deposits at a depth of about 2,000 meters. Test production saw the well produce 19,000 cubic meters of gas per day, according to Chinese media, and CNOOC is planning more than 100 wells in the field.
In July, China claimed CNOOC's first offshore shale discovery in the Beibu Gulf in the South China Sea at a well drilled without any previous detections. The Weiye 1 well is estimated to contain approximately 8.76 billion barrels of shale oil.
A month later, Chinese state firm Sinopec announced the discovery of a huge oil field in the Tarim Basin, containing 1.7 billion tons of oil reserves and believed to be one of the deepest commercial fields in the world.
Discoveries have been piling up over the past 24 months and this week's latest gas discovery comes as Chinese refineries are said to be drawing on crude supplies, most recently in September. According to Reuters columnist Clyde Russell , refineries are tapping into domestic reserves and this is evidenced by the fact that imports have fallen in the face of record processing volumes. Reuters noted that China's crude oil imports in September fell more than 10% from August, citing customs data.
This means both that China is exploiting its warehouse reserves, accumulated when prices were low, but also that it is making the most of its national production, becoming less dependent on foreign countries.
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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-cina-scopre-una-serie-di-grossi-giacimenti-di-gas-e-petrolio/ on Tue, 24 Oct 2023 14:39:21 +0000.