The cumulative output of shale oil from Changqing Oilfield, China's largest shale oil production base, has hit a milestone of over 20 million tons, indicating that China's shale oil exploration has entered a new stage focusing on scale production and efficiency orientation, said the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) on Sunday.
Shale oil refers to unconventional petroleum resources produced in shale formations. It is an important replacement for long-term stable crude oil production, but faces extreme difficulty in extraction.
The Ordos Basin, where Changqing Oilfield is located, has proven shale oil reserves exceeding 1 billion tons. Since the beginning of this year, the oilfield has accelerated shale oil production, adding 144 horizontal wells and achieving a daily output of over 10,000 tons, setting a new historical record. "We are going to explore and extract shale oil with greater effort. And we estimate that by the end of this year, the Changqing Oilfeld will produce over 3.5 million tons of shale oil, and we plan to increase this annual output to 4.5 million tons by 2030. This is just one more guarantee to ensure our country's energy security," said Liu Yicang, deputy manager of the oilfield development division of Changqing Oilfield. It took only three years for the total shale oil production to climb from 10 million tons to 20 million tons at Changqing Oilfield. Currently, the shale oil production at Changqing Oilfield accounts for more than half of China's total.
Shale oil output of China's largest oil-and-gas field exceeds 20 mln tons
China's 42nd Antarctic Expedition team has started unloading supplies for scientific exploration after arriving at waters near the Zhongshan Station, a Chinese research base in Antarctica.
The ongoing seven-month scientific exploration mission is supported by Chinese icebreakers the Xuelong and the Xuelong 2, which set sail from Shanghai on Nov 1.
The two icebreakers will deliver about 2,000 tons of supplies to the Zhongshan Station for scientific exploration.
The Xuelong 2 arrived first at a designated unloading spot about 12 kilometers from the Zhongshan Station. Later, the ship's Ka-32 helicopter transported in batches more than 300 tons of polar fuel to the research base when weather conditions were favorable.
"Nearly 90 members of the expedition team carried by the two ship are already at the Zhongshan Station, preparing for receiving supplies and assignments for scientific exploration," said Wang Tao, person in charge of unloading operations at the Zhongshan Station.
Thanks to more than 30 hours of efforts by the Xuelong 2 to widen the channel and lead the way, the Xuelong, which was carrying about 1,500 tons of supplies, has also arrived at the unloading spot.
The unloading operations, involving a combination of sea-ice transport and helicopter lifts, are expected to be finished within two weeks.
And then, the Xuelong and the Xuelong 2 will proceed to China's Qingling Station and Changcheng Station in Antarctica, respectively.
The expedition team includes more than 500 members from over 80 institutions on the Chinese mainland, along with researchers from more than 10 other countries and regions, such as Thailand, Chile and Portugal, as well as China's Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions, in support of broader international scientific collaboration.
They will conduct multi-disciplinary scientific surveys, advance several major national research projects, and test domestically developed equipment under polar conditions.
Particularly, scientific drilling experiments in lakes deep in the Antarctic inland ice sheet will be carried out for the first time.
China's 42nd Antarctic Expedition team unloads supplies at Zhongshan Station
