China’s top gas producer PetroChina claims it has made a major shale gas find in the country's south-western Sichuan and Yunnan provinces and is ready to report the size of the reserves to the Ministry of Natural Resources for confirmation.

The company’s shale gas outfit PetroChina Zhejiang, which has the responsibility to explore and develop the Zhaotong shale gas block in Yunnan, is said to have discovered 190 billion cubic metres of shale gas reserves on its Taiyang acreage.

Taiyang is located in Luzhou city in Sichuan province, northeast of the Zhaotong block, covering 300 square kilometres, with 37.6 Bcm confirmed technical recoverable, industry officials said.

Zhejiang has drilled 15 appraisal wells at Taiyang with vertical wells flowing an average of 15,000 cubic metres per day of shale gas and horizontal wells flowing 100,000 cmd.

PetroChina has already built 20 well pads with 41 of 63 planned production wells at Taiyang, aiming to build up an annual production capacity of 800 million cubic metres by the end of this year as part of the first-phase development.

PetroChina vice president Li Luguang confirmed the Taiyang find last week but stopped short of clarifying its size.

He did say that, along with Taiyang and other discoveries at the Weiyuan and Changling shale gas blocks, PetroChina has so far this year discovered 741 Bcm of shale gas reserves in Sichuan.

Zhaotong is one of three shale gas fields originally listed by the Chinese government for pilot development in 2012.

The field is now producing 1.15 Bcm shale gas per annum from five well pads involving about 95 wells.

Production is expected to increase to 1.3 Bcm this year, to 1.6 Bcm in 2020 and eventually to 5 Bcm in the future.

PetroChina is aiming to boost production in the Sichuan basin to 30 Bcm by the end of next year and to 50 Bcm in 2025 and 70 Bcm in 2035.

Most of the shale gas will be produced from Weiyuan, Changling and Zhaotong.

PetroChina owns and operates 11 shale gas exploration licences, of which 10 are in the Sichuan basin.

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Taiyang results boost PetroChina shale hopes