Sinopec discovers shale natural gas reserves in Sichuan

Energy giant Sinopec announced on Tuesday that it has discovered shale natural gas reserves in Southwest China’s Sichuan Basin with a confirmed volume of 387.8 billion cubic meters and potential daily output of 258,600 cubic meters, Shanghai Securities News reported on Tuesday.  

The exploration was Sinopec’s first success in detecting shale natural gas in the Cambrian shale, marking another milestone in natural gas exploration at the Sichuan Basin and forming a new natural gas reserve base, said the company.  

The first natural gas detection exploration project at the Sichuan Basin was initiated in April 2020, and it found the Weirong shale natural gas field, with an annual output of 3 billion cubic meters. The latest breakthrough will support the construction of a natural gas base with a capacity of 100 billion cubic meters in the region.  

Sinopec’s annual natural gas output has passed 8 billion cubic meters as of 2021, up from 2.82 billion cubic meters in 2012. Sinopec has become China’s largest natural gas producer with an accumulated output of 52.95 billion cubic meters in the last decade, said the company.