ACADEMIC DISCUSSION

Profitable exploration and development of continental tight oil in China

  • HU Suyun ,
  • ZHU Rukai ,
  • WU Songtao ,
  • BAI Bin ,
  • YANG Zhi ,
  • CUI Jingwei
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  • 1. Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration & Development, PetroChina, Beijing 100083, China;
    2. National Energy Tight Oil and Gas E&P Center, Beijing 100083, China;
    3. CNPC Key Laboratory of Oil & Gas Reservoirs, Beijing 100083, China;

Received date: 2017-12-01

  Revised date: 2018-06-04

  Online published: 2018-05-28

Abstract

Based on the investigation of tight oil exploration and development in North America, the successful cases of tight oil exploration and development in North America under the background of low oil price are summarized. The geological differences between continental tight oil in China and marine tight oil in North America is analyzed to explore the technical strategies for the industrial development of continental tight oil in China. The experiences of large-scale exploration and profitable development of tight oil in North America can be taken as references from the following 6 perspectives, namely exploring new profitable strata in mature exploration areas, strengthening the economic evaluation of sweet spots and focusing on the investment for high-profitability sweet spots, optimizing the producing of tight oil reserves by means of repetitive fracturing and 3D fracturing, optimizing drilling and completion technologies to reduce the cost, adopting commodity hedging to ensure the sustainable profit, and strengthening other resources exploration to improve the profit of whole project. In light of the high abundance of tight oil in China, we can draw on successful experience from North America, four suggestions are proposed in sight of the geological setting of China’s lacustrine tight oil: (1) Evaluating the potential of tight oil resources and optimizing the strategic area for tight oil exploration; (2) selecting “sweet spot zone” and “sweet spot interval” accurately for precise and high efficient development; (3) adopting advanced tight oil fracturing technology to realize economic development; (4) innovating management system to promote the large-scale profitable development of tight oil.

Cite this article

HU Suyun , ZHU Rukai , WU Songtao , BAI Bin , YANG Zhi , CUI Jingwei . Profitable exploration and development of continental tight oil in China[J]. Petroleum Exploration and Development, 2018 , 45(4) : 737 -748 . DOI: 10.11698/PED.2018.04.20

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