Hess signs up for shale drive at Malang acreage

By XU YIHE Singapore

 20 December 2012 23:59 GMT

Hess of the US has signed a production sharing contract with state-owned PetroChina to jointly develop shale oil at the Malang block in northern Xinjiang’s Santanghu basin.

The PSC was approved by China’s National Development & Reform Commission last week and follows Hess’ earlier failure to develop shale oil with PetroChina at the Daqing oilfield in north-east China.

Sources said the Malang trough, which covers about 1500 square kilometres, could hold probable, possible and proven shale oil reserves of 360 million tonnes or 2.6 billion barrels.

Few details of the contract terms are available, but sources said the partners will probably go ahead with multi-stage pilot programmes should they proceed with commercial development.

Santanghu’s shale oil reservoirs are in the Permian…

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