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.