ABSTRACT: The Present And Prospects Of China's Coalbed Methane Industry

Sun, Maoyuan, Wenjie Xin, and Zhiqiang Fan , China United Coalbed Methane Co. Ltd, Beijing, China

Coal accounts for over 75 percent while oil and gas are seriously deficient in China's consumption structure of primary energy, which has resulted in social and environmental problems. There exists about 30 to 35 trillion cubic meters of coalbed methane(CBM) resources in China. The exploitation and utilization of CBM on a large scale can obviously compensate for the deficiency of supply of conventional natural gas , as well as benefit to coal mine's safe production and environmental protection.

Near 70 percent of China's CBM resources distributes in North China, which is largely advantageous to the utilization of CBM. In addition, the enormous demand to gas energy in China also will bring the superiority and marketable potential to China's CBM industry. The Chinese government has issued a series of preferential policies and encouragement measures for the CBM industry that has entered into a normalized industrial management stage. In the light of the exclusive rights for foreign cooperation of China's CBM and Production Sharing Contract(PSC) model, up to now, China United Coalbed Methane Co. Ltd.(CUCBM) together with five foreign companies has signed seven PSCs for CBM cooperative exploitation. Simultaneously, the self-financed CBM exploration project of CUCBM has also made a great progress with 27 exploratory wells drilled.

The goal of China's CBM industry is to set up 4-5 CBM development and utilization bases in the next 5 years and productivity will be up to 3-4 billion cubic meters by the year 2005 and 10 billion cubic meters by the year 2010.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90913©2000 AAPG International Conference and Exhibition, Bali, Indonesia