“The exploration and exploitation technologies and equipment for shale gas have basically realized localization”, said the vice director of China Geological Survey (CGS) Dr Li Jinfa at the forum of “Shale Gas and Ecological Environment” held on June 28.

Up to now, China has essentially mastered exploration and development technologies for shale gas in such fields as geophysics, drilling, fracturing and gas testing, reducing the cycle of horizontal drilling from 150 days to 70 days, the shortest even 46 days, and the cost for single horizontal well from 100 million RMB to 50 to 70 million RMB.

In recent years, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Finance, National Energy Administration have introduced in succession a series of policies to encourage and support the exploration and exploitation, and include shale gas as one part of the development planning, targeting over 30 billion m³ production by 2020.

Dr Li Jinfa made further introduction about China’s idea of Green Development, for which four measures have been adopted. The first is to introduce measures for dealing with wasted water, wasted gas, offscum and noises; the second is to establish strict process for environment protection; the third is to adopt “well factory” as the model for operation to save land use; the last is to conduct operation, building as well as rehabilitation at the same time.

According to the dynamic monitoring on shallow underground water targeting at the hydraulic fracturing in recent one year, no pollution has been found related to shale gas development.

The CGS data shows that the 2014 production of shale gas hit 1.3 billion m³, adding 106.75 billion m³ to the proved reserves.