Sinopec reports east China's shale field pumps 1,600 tons of oil per day

Sinopec, the state oil group, announced on Wednesday that it is progressing with the development of shale oils at its Jiyang pilot project in east China. The company now pumps 1,600 tons per day, up from just 100 tons in 2020.

Sinopec, at this rate, is on course to meet a 2022 target of producing 500,000 tons per year by 2025 in Jiyang. Jiyang is located mainly in Shandong Province and covers 7,300 square kilometers (1.8 million acres).

China's oil companies have increased their efforts to extract shale deposits that are difficult to access to compensate for the rapidly depleting older conventional oilfields.

Sinopec reported that Jiyang currently has 36 wells, each of which pumps more than 100 tonnes a day. The Fengye 1-1HF is the well with the highest output, at 262.8 tons.

Sinopec reported that the Jiyang shale zone, which is part of an old conventional Shengli oilfield with a shale resource estimated at 10.5 billion tonnes, out of which 1,73 billion tons were identified as potential reserves.

Shale oil is one of the most difficult and expensive types of oil to produce and explore, even though it has a huge amount of resources. It only accounts for 1% of China’s total crude production. (Reporting and editing by Jamie Freed; Chen Aizhu)

(source: Reuters)