China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) has announced a major shale gas breakthrough at its Ziyang Dongfeng field.
China’s Ministry of Natural Resources has officially approved proven geological reserves of 235.687 billion cubic metres, marking the birth of the country’s first ultra-deep shale gas field on a 100-billion-cubic-metre level.
Located within the Sichuan Basin, the Ziyang Dongfeng field taps into the Cambrian Qiongzhusi Formation, the earth’s oldest commercial shale layer, formed 540 million years ago.
The discovery is particularly notable for its extreme depth, with gas trapped between 4,500 and 5,200 metres below the surface.
Extracting resources at these depths is notoriously difficult, presenting challenges that have long stymied the global oil and gas industry.
The Sinopec team had to contend with complex accumulation mechanisms and extreme pressure and heat. To overcome these hurdles, engineers moved away from conventional exploration models, instead utilising AI to perform the geophysical equivalent of a ‘CT scan’ on the earth’s subsurface.
Combined with breakthroughs in ultra‑deep drilling and fracturing, these efforts have yielded a fully proprietary technology system for Cambrian ultra‑deep shale gas exploration.
“After over a decade of persistent effort, we have taken Cambrian shale gas from zero to a hundred-billion-cubic-metre-scale reserve base,” said Liu Wei, Director of Sinopec Southwest Petroleum Bureau.
“This validates the formation’s vast potential and gives us a replicable technical pathway to expand China’s shale gas development frontier.”
This latest discovery follows a string of successes for Sinopec, including the Weirong and Qijiang fields, as the company pushes further into Project Deep Earth.
The breakthrough also reinforces China’s position as a major player in the unconventional gas sector. Since discovering the Fuling field in 2012, China has joined the US and Canada as one of the few nations to achieve commercial-scale shale gas production.
“Our next step is to drive high-quality exploration and production, accelerate capacity growth at Ziyang Dongfeng, and contribute to secure national energy security,” said Wei.
