With Sinopec’s breakthrough in exploiting Fuling Shale Gas demonstration area, commercialization of shale gas is coming true.

At the recently-held 2014 Beijing International Petroleum Exhibition & the 6^th International Petroleum Summit, LIU Ru-shan, Deputy General Manager of Sinopec Oilfield Service Corporation said that by the end of 2015, the total production capability would have reached 5 billion 3 m³, thus the prospect of realizing the given target of 10 billion m³ in 2017 would probably be relished. What’s more, the Fuling Shale Gas Block would be hopefully commercialized in a certain scale this year. The Block had planned to be incorporated into Sichuan-East Gas Pipeline next year. Correspondingly, the equipment manufacturers would launch high-power new products, so as to accelerate the domestic shale gas exploration and exploitation.

LIU said, “With incessant technological breakthrough, the drilling cycle of our single wells just created a record of the minimum 46 days, much shorter than the previous record of 60 days.” As LIU introduced, currently, the 48 wells in Fuling area was stable in production, with the maximum 2.2 million m³ gas production in a day. The next step is to apply technologies such as the optimal design of shale gas drilling and speed & efficiency intensification technology to the field construction, so as to form production evaluation of unconventional reservoir stratum, to establish a construction mode and to facilitate a large scale plant exploitation of shale gas.

Now, the oil majors are striding forward singing militant songs on the one side, and the equipment manufacturers are getting every muscle ready on the other side.

The shale gas market was aimed at three years ago. Honghua Group, a Hongkong stock listed company and a private oil rig manufacturer equipped with a specialist team of 20 persons, has launched the latest integrated solution for shale gas, with the intention of becoming the general contractor of EPC for shale gas exploitation. It is reported that Honghua Group has acquired letter of intent from Shenhua Group. It is said that according to this solution fracturing pumps with 6000 horsepower shall be equipped, which may help to save a cost of drilling by 10%. ZHOU Bing, senior Deputy General Manager of Honghua Group said, “With opening of the two big markets respectively for drilling rigs and oceanographic engineering equipment, the group can be expected to maintain a performance growth of 30%.”

Yilong Hengye Corporation now has deployed a couple of construction teams in Jiaoshi area of Fuling to provide integrated services of coiled tubing, drilling & plugging and fracturing. The success of 12-4HF Pyroshale Gas Well blowout has testified the service and technological competence of Yilong Corporation, creating favorable conditions for the follow-up development in this area.