Chinese Shale Fracking Contract Awarded
Shenzhen-based Petro-king Oilfield Services, an investment holding company, said August 15 its wholly-owned subsidiary has won a shale gas fracturing contract in China.
Petro-king Oilfield Technology, an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of the company, has received a notice August 14 from a customer announcing that Petro-king Shenzhen has successfully won a bidding for the provision of shale gas field fracturing services in southwestern China, it said. The contract value is estimated at yuan 90mn ($12mn).
With demand for gas increasing due to government’s coal to gas switching policy, Asia’s biggest economy is looking to exploit its vast shale gas reserves. Last month, China’s natural resources ministry said the country’s technically recoverable shale gas reserves increased by 62% year on year to reach 916.8bn m3 by end-2017. In April, WoodMac said it expects Chinese shale gas production to almost double from 2017 to reach 17bn m3 in 2020; at present the major producing fields are Sinopec's Fuling in the Chongqing region, and PetroChina's Changning-Weiyuan and Zhaotong projects in the mountainous Sichuan Basin.