The Ministry of Land and Resources recently confirmed that the Puguang Gas
Field in Southeast China's Sichuan Province has become the country's second largest, with
verified reserves reaching 356.072 billion cubic meters.
It is the first
large-scale gas field China has found in its marine strata, experts said. Over
the past several decades, major oil and gas fields have been discovered only in
the continental strata.
Ma Yongsheng, vice-manager of the Southern
Exploration and Production Company, part of the China Petroleum and Chemical
Corporation, said the field, which is located in Xuanhan County in the northeast
of Sichuan Province, has huge potential and its ultimate reserves will be
gigantic.
"Our company has so far drilled more than 20 wells in the field
with none of them falling through, which is uncommon," Ma was quoted by CCTV as
saying.
Liu Guangding, an academic and researcher with the Chinese
Academy of Sciences' Institute of Geology and Geophysics, said the Puguang Gas
Field marked a technological breakthrough for China's oil and gas
exploration.
"In the past, China's exploration of oil and gas has focused
on the continental strata," Liu said. "But the marine strata, which have
previously been neglected, have far greater oil and gas reserves."
Liu
projected more major oil and gas fields would be detected in China's vast marine
strata, such as the Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Ordos in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the Sichuan
Basin.
"About 70 to 80 percent of China's oil and natural gas resources
have not yet been detected," Liu said. "The new oil and gas fields in the marine
strata will greatly ease China's shortage of oil and natural gas."
Ninety
percent of the world's verified oil and gas reserves lie in the marine strata
and China has 4.5 million square kilometers of them, which accounts for almost
half of its total land area, sources said.
China's largest gas field, the
Sulige Gas Field in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, has verified reserves
of 533.6 billion cubic meters and went into production last year.
China
became an oil importing country in 1993.
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