On 22 February, Yanchang Petroleum's scientific and technological achievements of "Exploration, Discovery and Efficient Development of Yan'an Trillion Square Meter Extra Large Tight Gas Field" passed the technical appraisal organised by China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation (CPCIF) in Beijing.The appraisal committee composed of 9 academicians and 2 experts, with academician Luo Pingya of Chinese Academy of Engineering as the director and academicians Zhou Shouwei and Zhao Wenzhi as the vice directors, considered that the overall technical level of the achievement was in the international leading position.
Li Yongliang, Director of Science and Technology and Equipment Department of China Petrochemical Federation, attended the appraisal meeting. Luo Wanming, deputy secretary of the party committee and general manager of Yanchang Petroleum Group, attended and delivered a speech, and Wang Xiangzeng, chief scientist and chief geologist of the Group, reported the results. Leaders and experts from universities and institutes such as Institute of Geology and Geophysics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Southwest Petroleum University, Xi'an University of Petroleum, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Northwest University and other project partners, as well as relevant persons in charge of the Group's Science and Technology Department, Resource and Exploration and Development Department, Gas Field Company, the Group's Research Institute, and the Natural Gas Research Institute, attended the meeting.
In his speech, Luo Wanming introduced the development of Yanchang Petroleum over the past 120 years and the situation of increasing oil and gas reserves and production in recent years, especially the natural gas industry, led by scientific and technological innovation, to realize the outstanding performance and important contribution from scratch, from small to large, from weak to strong. He emphasized that in the future, Yanchang Petroleum will deeply implement the new strategy of national energy security, continue to strengthen the “industry-university-research-use” collaborative research with academicians' teams and scientific research institutes, and strive to make more breakthroughs in the field of tight gas field development, and strive to “hold the energy bowl”, serve and guarantee the national energy bowl. We will strive to make more breakthroughs in the field of tight gas field development and contribute more power to “secure the energy rice bowl” and serve to guarantee national energy security.
Wang Xiangzeng pointed out in the results of the report, Ordos Basin as China's second largest oil and gas basin, has long had a “southern oil and northern gas” distribution pattern, the preliminary study that the southern Upper Paleozoic topography is gentle, the water body is deeper, the reservoir is not developed, after more than 50 years of exploration has not been a breakthrough in natural gas. 2003-2007, Yanchang Petroleum, located in the southern part of the basin, renewed the development of tight gas fields, and made more breakthrough progress in the development of tight gas fields. From 2003 to 2007, Yanchang Petroleum, located in the southern part of the basin, reevaluated the potential of natural gas resources in the exploration area, formulated the Natural Gas Exploration and Development Plan in 2008, and organized a number of scientific research institutes to jointly tackle the “gas-poor area” and explore the “big gas field”.
Over the past 20 years, Yanchang Petroleum's research team has focused on the three major issues of “whether sand bodies are developed, whether there are effective reservoirs, and whether natural gas can be deposited” and the two major technical problems of “how to realize efficient development of gas reservoirs and how to effectively increase the output of a single well”, and has made breakthroughs through continuous research and development, and has proposed a plan for the upper Paleozoic exploration and development. Through continuous research and breakthroughs, the company has put forward a new understanding of the geological theory of storage formation in the scale of sea and land intersecting with each other in the Upper Paleozoic, created a new model of multi-layer dessert aggregation of sea and land intersecting with each other in dense sandstone gas reservoirs, and broken the traditional understanding of the basin as “south oil and north gas”, laying the theoretical foundation for the discovery of the extra-large Yan'an field; meanwhile, a new method and structural method of three-dimensional development of mixed well networks for complex superposed gas reservoirs have been created. At the same time, it has created new methods of three-dimensional development of complex stacked gas reservoirs, efficient fracturing of structurally non-homogeneous dense reservoirs and other key new development technologies, which have strongly supported the exploration and discovery and efficient development of Yan'an gas field on a large scale, and realized the historic breakthrough of natural gas in the southern part of the Ordos Basin from scratch, and opened up a brand-new situation of “full-basin production of natural gas” in the Basin.
Up to now, Yan'an gas field has a total of 1.3 trillion cubic meters of proven geological reserves of natural gas, the first phase of the completed capacity of 12.8 billion cubic meters per year, and the output will reach 10.45 billion cubic meters in 2024, with the incremental amount of natural gas accounting for one-sixth of the national incremental amount, and it has successfully entered into the ranks of the 10-billion-cubic-meter fields and ranked as the fourth largest field of the country, and the cumulative amount of gas production has exceeded 55 billion cubic meters, which has contributed to the protection of the energy security of the country, and the support of the steady growth and development of Shaanxi. It has made important contributions to guaranteeing national energy security, supporting Shaanxi's stable growth and helping revitalize the old revolutionary areas in northern Shaanxi.
Experts of the appraisal committee believe that the exploration, discovery and efficient development of Yan'an gas field is a major achievement of China's oil and gas industry in recent years, with high theoretical, technical and application content. This achievement not only makes Yanchang Petroleum, which has been developed for hundreds of years, move from one oil alone to oil and gas simultaneously, provides important support for the Ordos Basin to build a billion-ton oil and gas energy security base, but also makes outstanding contributions to the economic and social development of the old revolutionary areas in northern Shaanxi.