Why BP decided to exit China shale gas?
By Trend
Both poor well performance and challenging above-ground conditions contributed to BP's decision to exit China shale gas, Wood Mackenzie Eastern Asia upstream research analyst, Xianhui Zhang said, Trend reports.
BP and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a production sharing contract (PSC) for shale gas exploration, development and production in the Neijiang-Dazu block in the Sichuan Basin, China in 2016. The contract was BP’s first shale gas PSC in China and covered an area of approximately 1,500 square kilometres.
"The difficulties, for both national oil companies (NOCs) and oil Majors, highlight the unique challenges of developing shale gas in China. These include complex and deep reservoir geology, low well productivity, marginal economics and infrastructure constraints,” he said.
The expert noted that China’s shale gas formations tend to be deeper, more fragmented and less pressurised compared to the US.
“Much of the discovered resource is located in mountainous terrain; meaning it takes more capital, labour and time to develop. In addition, we understand BP was chasing deeper targets than those being drilled at Sinopec's Fuling development and PetroChina's three current shale projects,” noted Zhang.