China powers up with CBM

By XU YIHE Singapore

 26 August 2011 01:19 GMT

CHINA will prioritise coalbed methane exploration and development over the next five years, incorporating the once-neglected CBM industry into the country’s overall natural gas development strategy in a bid to boost its total gas consumption in the energy mix to 8% by 2015, up from 5% last year.

In the latest five-year plan, for 2011 to 2015, about 10 domestic companies, including CBM developers, coalminers and power generation companies plan to spend up to 43 billion yuan ($6.8 billion) on CBM exploration and development in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Guizhou, Henan, Liaoning and Anhui provinces and the Xinjiang region.

Of the total proposed investment, 4.5 billion yuan is earmarked for exploration and 38.5 billion yuan for development.

The exploration will involve drilling 850 wells and acquiring 9600 kilometres of 2D seismic, with the aim of increasing China’s proven reserves by 850 billion cubic…

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