Technologies advancement and prospect of natural gas development in China

In recent years, international oil prices have stayed low and China strives to develop green energy. Under these backgrounds, natural gas has gradually become the key business of petroleum industry in China. After years of hardworking, several developmental technological breakthroughs are achieved for deep gas, tight gas, shale gas, coal-bed methane, development adjustment strategies, engineering technologies and decision-making system. With the depth of development, influenced by policy, environment and geological conditions, continuous efficient development of domestic natural gas faces many challenges: lower ratio of good quality reserves, more development expense, larger difficulties of remaining development benefit for unconventional gas reservoir, further upstream benefit compression, poorer stable production ability and fiercer competition in the energy market. In the future, natural gas development in China will enter into a new stage of emphasizing on both the unconventional gas and the conventional gas, gas imports will rise year by year, resulting in the increased external dependency, and natural gas will become the main growth engine in the process of energy structure adjustment.