Successful shale gas drilling in China

Chinese oil and gas company PetroChina has successfully drilled some shale gas wells in southern Sichuan province in China, the Financial Times reported Dec. 7. The company has drilled about 20 wells and the wells are producing at a rate of about 10,000 cubic meters per day, the Financial Times report says.

According to U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates China may have 1,275 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable shale gas in the Sichuan and Tarim basin in the south and west of the country, and in basins in northeastern China. In 2010 China’s Ministry of Land Resources set a goal of producing 12 percent of the country’s natural gas supply from shale gas by 2020, EIA says.

—Alan Bailey