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Shale
and Shale Gas in China
Zhang, Jinchuan 1; Fan, Tailiang 1; Yu,
Bingsong 1; Tang, Xuan 1
(1)China University of
Geosciences, Beijing, China.
Shale gas is a kind of unconventional natural gas accumulation
with the concurrence of free gas and adsorbed gas in source rocks. There are
two types of gas generating source rocks in China, one type is mudstone from
the lacustrine environment, primary distributed in North China, and the other
type is shale from marine and marine-continental transitional environments in
South, Middle and West China. Researches on shale gas are made fast progress in
China recently. Palaeozoic Yangtze regions in South China and many Mesozoic and
Cenozoic basins in Northern China are of favorable geological settings for
shale gas accumulation according to rough survey of shale gas from the year
2000. Based on geology analysis, logging data, seismic interpretation and well
performance testing, favorable profitable regions for shale gas can be
predicted. There are at least three kinds of regional gas shale accumulation
models are summarized such as Cenozoic-Mesozoic lacustrine mudstone represented
by Bohai Bay or Turpan-Hami basin, Mesozoic-Palaeozoic transitional shale
represented by Ordos basin, and Palaeozoic marine shale represented by Sichuan
basin. Among them, the resources of shale gas in Paleozoic are estimated to be
largest and Mesozoic and Cenozoic groups decreased in turn. Resources in place
of shale gas
in China are roughly estimated as 26 tcm.
AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90135©2011 AAPG International Conference and Exhibition, Milan, Italy, 23-26 October 2011.