OREANDA-NEWS. February 20, 2014. A major breakthrough was made by CNPC in natural gas exploration in the Sichuan Basin. As certified by the Ministry of Land and Resources, the newly added proven gas in place in the Longwangmiao formation of Cambrian system in the Moxi block of Anyue gas field is 440.385 billion cubic meters, with technically recoverable reserves hitting 308.2 billion cubic meters.

This is the largest monomer marine uncompartmentalized carbonate gas reservoir discovered in China up to now, featured by large reserve scale, broad gas-bearing areas, high formation pressure, high gas flow, and superior gas components. The production test has obtained average per well daily output of 1.1 million cubic meters, and the wells in production yield at 0.6 million cubic meters per day averagely.

The Anyue gas field is located at the paleo uplift of central Sichuan. Since 2011, CNPC has drilled two exploration wells — Gaoshi-1 and Moxi-8, both obtaining high-yield gas flows of one million cubic meters per day from the Simian system and Cambrian system respectively.

It only took CNPC less than two years to find the Longwangmiao gas reservoir, identify its reserves, and make a successful production test with 1 billion cubic meters capacity. The phase-I capacity building project of 4 billion cubic meters is now on full swing, and the phase-II capacity building project of 6 billion cubic meters has already been kicked off. At present, gas production test at Moxi block has cumulatively yielded more than 600 million cubic meters.