Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 1 The exploration activities for shales of various ages in different de-
positional settings in China.
(Base map modified from Zou et al. in 2011).
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basins are mainly distributed in the Appalachian thrust belt in the east and
the Rocky Mountain thrust belt in the west and are defined by marine de-
positional environments.
In 2010, the Strategic Research Center of Oil and Gas - Ministry of Land and
Resources (MLR) and China University of Geosciences at Beijing used an
analog assessment method to announce that China Shale Gas resources are
predicted to be about 30 trillion cubic metres (TCM) or 1059 trillion cubic feet
(TCF). In 2011, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) assessed that
China could have 36.11 TCM or 1275 TCF of technically recoverable shale gas.
In March 2012, the China Ministry of Land and Resources announced that
China had 25.08 TCM (886 TCF) of recoverable shale gas reserve in marine,
transitional and lacustrine geologic settings in onshore China (excluding the
Tibetan Plateau area). Recently, in June 2013, EIA reduced their assessment of
China's recoverable shale gas reserve a little to 31.56 TCM or 1115 TCF.
Either number indicates that China's shale resources are the largest in the
world and comparable with that of the US's updated 665 TCF recoverable
shale gas. In terms of shale gas proportions in different geologic ages, the
Paleozoic period dominates with 66.7%, followed by the Mesozoic 26.7%
and Cenozoic 6.6%. For the different depositional settings, the marine and
transitional account for 68.41% and lacustrine shale gas has 31.59%.
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These
figures indicate that both marine and lacustrine shales in various
