Technologcial progress and development directions of PetroChina overseas oil and gas exploration

Through a comprehensive review of PetroChina overseas oil and gas exploration of more than 20 years,we systematically summarize the development history,development status and application results of the overseas oil and gas exploration theory and technology.Overseas oil and gas exploration has experienced four stages,exploratory exploration,progressive exploration,risk exploration and efficient exploration.The overseas exploration theory and technology have also gone through the initially direct borrow of domestic mature technology to the integrated application,and then to the research innovation based on overseas features.A series of overseas oil and gas exploration theories and technologies represented by theories and technologies for passive rift basins,salt basins and foreland basin slopes,and global oil and gas geology and resource evaluation have been established.On the basis of deep analysis of the future overseas exploration development demand for the technology,and combined with the domestic and overseas future development trend of theory and technology,this paper systematically discusses the overseas exploration difficulties,technical requirements and the main development directions and aims of exploration theory and technology in the future:(1)Develop conventional onshore oil and gas exploration techniques continuously for the overseas exploration and keep them at an internationally advanced level.(2)Develop the global oil and gas resources and assets integrated optimization evaluation technology and its information system construction project innovatively to reach the international leading level.(3)Develop the deep water exploration technology integratively and narrow the gap with the world’s advanced level.

Evaluation of the oil and gas preservation conditions, source rocks, and hydrocarbongenerating potential of the Qiangtang Basin: New evidence from the scientific drilling project

The Qiangtang Basin of the Tibetan Plateau,located in the eastern Tethys tectonic domain,is the largest new marine petroliferous region for exploration in China.The scientific drilling project consisting primarily of well QK-1 and its supporting shallow boreholes for geological surveys(also referred to as the Project)completed in recent years contributes to a series of new discoveries and insights into the oil and gas preservation conditions and source rock evaluation of the Qiangtang Basin.These findings differ from previous views that the Qiangtang Basin has poor oil and gas preservation conditions and lacks high-quality source rocks.As revealed by well QK-1 and its supporting shallow boreholes in the Project,the Qiangtang Basin hosts two sets of high-quality regional seals,namely an anhydrite layer in the Quemo Co Formation and the gypsum-bearing mudstones in the Xiali Formation.Moreover,the Qiangtang Basin has favorable oil and gas preservation conditions,as verified by the comprehensive study of the sealing capacity of seals,basin structure,tectonic uplift,magmatic activity,and groundwater motion.Furthermore,the shallow boreholes have also revealed that the Qiangtang Basin has high-quality hydrocarbon source rocks in the Upper Triassic Bagong Formation,which are thick and widely distributed according to the geological and geophysical data.In addition,the petroleum geological conditions,such as the type,abundance,and thermal evolution of organic matter,indicate that the Qiangtang Basin has great hydrocarbon-generating potential.

Bargaining strategy of oil companies in international oil and gas development Projects-Based on a bilateral bargaining model

Bargaining between the host country and oil companies is very common to international oil and gas development projects.The existence of information asymmetry gives the host country an endogenous bargaining advantage.Foreign oil companies might change their unfavorable negotiating position by changing the order of bidding and adjusting bidding strategies.This paper introduces both factors into a bilateral bargaining model to study the impact of information asymmetry and bidding order on the strategy and equilibrium returns of oil companies.According to the ownership of the right to bid first,two scenarios are designed for the model to compare the equilibrium returns of the host country and oil companies.The results show that:1)There is a first-mover advantage in the process of bilateral bidding,so oil companies better bid first;2)The information asymmetry will lead to a higher nominal income ratio of oil companies and a lower nominal income ratio of the host country,but it doesn’t affect the total income ratio at all.

Technological progress and development directions of PetroChina overseas oil and gas field production

This study reviews the development history of PetroChina’s overseas oil and gas field development technologies, summarizes the characteristic technologies developed, and puts forward the development goals and technological development directions of overseas business to overcome the challenges met in overseas oil and gas production. In the course of PetroChina’s overseas oil and gas field production practice of more than 20 years, a series of characteristic technologies suitable for overseas oil and gas fields have been created by combining the domestic mature oil and gas field production technologies with the features of overseas oil and gas reservoirs, represented by the technology for high-speed development and stabilizing oil production and controlling water rise for overseas sandstone oilfields, high efficiency development technology for large carbonate oil and gas reservoirs and foamy oil depletion development technology in use of horizontal wells for extra-heavy oil reservoirs. Based on in-depth analysis of the challenges faced by overseas oil and gas development and technological requirements, combined with the development trends of oil and gas development technologies in China and abroad, overseas oil and gas development technologies in the future are put forward, including artificial intelligence reservoir prediction and 3 D geological modeling, secondary development and enhanced oil recovery(EOR) of overseas sandstone oilfields after high speed development, water and gas injection to improve oil recovery in overseas carbonate oil and gas reservoirs, economic and effective development of overseas unconventional oil and gas reservoirs, efficient development of marine deep-water oil and gas reservoirs. The following goals are expected to be achieved: keep the enhanced oil recovery(EOR) technology for high water-cut sandstone oilfield at international advanced level, and make the development technology for carbonate oil and gas reservoirs reach the international advanced level, and the development technologies for unconventional and marine deep-water oil and gas reservoirs catch up the level of international leading oil companies quickly.

Development characteristics, models and strategies for overseas oil and gas fields

Based on about 20 years of accumulated experience and knowledge of oil and gas field development in overseas countries and regions for China's oil companies, the development features, ideas, models and plan designing strategies of overseas oil and gas fields were comprehensively summarized. Overseas oil and gas field development has ten major features, such as non-identity project resource, diversity of contract type, complexity of cooperation model, and so on. The overseas oil and gas field development aims at the maximization of production and benefit during the limited contract period, so the overseas oil and gas field development models are established as giving priority to production by natural energy, building large-scale production capacity, putting into production as soon as possible, realizing high oil production recovery rate, and achieving rapid payback period of investment. According to the overseas contract mode, a set of strategies for overseas oil and gas field development plans were made. For tax systems contracts, the strategy is to adopt the mode of "first fat and then thinner, easier in the first and then harder", that is, early investment pace, production increase rate, development workload and production were decided by the change of tax stipulated in the contract. For production share contracts, the strategy is to give priority to high production with a few wells at a high production recovery rate to increase the cost-oil and shorten the period of payback. For technical service contracts, the strategy is that the optimal production target and workload of the project were determined by the return on investment, so as to ensure that the peak production and stable production periods meet the contract requirements.

Analysis of the world oil and gas exploration situation in 2021

The global exploration investment, new oil and gas discoveries, exploration business adjustment strategies of oil companies in 2021, and future favorable exploration domains are systematically analyzed using commercial databases such as IHS and public information of oil companies. It has been found that the world oil and gas exploration situation in 2021 has continued the downturn since the outbreak of COVID-19. The investment and drilling workload decreased slightly, but the success rate of exploration wells, especially deepwater exploration wells, increased significantly, and the newly discovered reserves increased slightly compared with last year. Deep waters of the passive continental margin basins are still the leading sites for discovering conventional large and medium-sized oil and gas fields. The conventional oil and gas exploration in deep formations of onshore petroliferous basins has been keeping a good state, with tight/shale oil and gas discoveries made in Saudi Arabia, Russia, and other countries. While strengthening the exploration and development of local resources, national, international, and independent oil companies have been focusing on major overseas frontiers using their advantages, including risk exploration in deep waters and natural gas. Future favorable exploration directions in the three major frontiers, the global deep waters, deep onshore formations, and unconventional resources, have been clarified. Four suggestions are put forward for the global exploration business of Chinese oil companies: first, a farm in global deepwater frontier basins in advance through bidding at a low cost and adopt the “dual exploration model” after making large-scale discoveries;second, enter new blocks of emerging hot basins in the world through farm-in and other ways, to find large oil and gas fields quickly;third, cooperate with national oil companies of the resource host countries in the form of joint research and actively participate exploration of deep onshore formations of petroliferous basins;fourth, track tight/shale oil and gas cooperation opportunities in a few countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, and take advantage of mature domestic theories and technologies to farm in at an appropriate time.

Study on the Environmental Impact of Oil and Gas Field Development on the Ecological Red Line Area

To cooperate with the five ministries and commissions of the state to carry out joint investigation on the environmentally sensitive areas involved in oil and gas exploration and development,for the problems found in survey,containing complex type and numerous amount of ecologically sensitive space and ecological red line involved in oil and gas field enterprises,scientific nature of delimitation,lack of strong support of laws and regulations for forced withdrawal of oil and gas production facilities in these areas,some countermeasures and suggestions were proposed,such as further evaluating and combing scope and functional zoning of existing environmentally sensitive areas and ecological red lines,treating differently,enhancing pertinence of prohibition in ecologically sensitive regions,declining blindness of the withdrawal of oil and gas facilities in environmentally sensitive areas,strengthening seriousness of approval of exploration and mining rights of oil and gas resources,and establishing strategic reserve exploration and hierarchical development mechanism. Moreover,oil and gas field enterprises should integrate more efforts to ① accelerate to find out the current situation of environmental quality,② adhere to developing in protection,and protecting in development,③ increase attention and participation strengthen of providing technical support for national oil and gas exploration and development strategy evaluation,④ accelerate communication and docking with local governments on the ecological red line,⑤ actively strive to be included in the positive list management of local governments,⑥ accelerate to establish and perfect primary database of oil and gas production and facilities construction,and ⑦ document management information system of the ecological red line.

Measures of Environmental Protection of Petroleum Exploration and Development in Tarim Basin

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Research progress and challenges of natural gas hydrate resource evaluation in the South China Sea

As an efficient clean energy,natural gas hydrate(NGH)has become a hot topic in recent researches.Since1990 s,China has made great achievements and progress in NGH exploration in the South China Sea(SCS),including determination of the favorable distribution areas and favorable strata thickness,identification of the dual source for accumulation,evaluation of the prospective gas contents,verification of the widespread existence,and confirmation of the technical recoverability of NGH resources.However,there are three major challenges in the NGH studies.First,all the 24 national key and major projects in the SCS focused on trial production engineering and geological engineering in the past 20 years,while 8 of the 10 international NGH research projects focused on resource potential.Second,resource evaluation methods are outdated and some parameter selection are subjective.Third,the existing resource evaluation results are low-level with a great uncertainty,and cannot be used to guide NGH exploration and production or strategic research.To improve the evaluation of NGH resources in the SCS,future researches should focus on four aspects:(1)improve the research on the criterion of the objective existence of NGH and the method of prediction and evaluation;(2)apply new theories and methods from the global NGH research;(3)boost the research on the difference and correlation of the conditions of hydrocarbon migration and accumulation in different basins;(4)innovate the theory and method of NGH resource potential evaluation.

Prospects of borehole NMR instruments and applications Dedicated to Professor Chaohui Ye on the occasion of his 80th birthday

Borehole nuclear magnetic resonance(NMR)is a powerful technology to characterize the petrophysical properties of underground reservoirs in the petroleum industry.The rising complexity of oil and gas exploration and development objectives,as well as the novel application contexts of underground reservoirs,have led to increasingly demanding requirements on borehole NMR technology including instrument design and related processing methods.This mini review summarizes the advances and applications of borehole NMR instruments along with some future possibilities.It may be helpful for researchers and engineers in the petroleum industry to understand the development status and future trends of borehole NMR technology.

Chinese Oil Companies＇ Overseas Cooperation in 2016

The paper analyzed the development and features of China's oil companies' overseas business in 2016.Despite the plummeting crude price and a weak global economy,these companies managed to do well in foreign countries.They steadily increased their shares of oil and gas in overseas oil and gas projects with their distinctive and unique ways:the three state-owned oil companies had focused on the countries involved in the One-BeltOne-Road Initiative,and others had been stressed more on international cooperation in a broader sense and areas.The small-and middle-scale companies had been matured and grew during the process.The central and local governments also played indispensable roles by providing need support for the cooperations.

Reservoir accumulation conditions and key exploration&development technologies for Keshen gas field in Tarim Basin

The Keshen gas field is located in the central part of Kuqa foreland thrust belt in Tarim Basin,and is another large gas field discovered in Kuqa depression after Kela 2 gas field.Since the breakthrough in 2008,a number of large and medium scale gas reservoirs including Keshen 2,Keshen 5 and Keshen 8 have been discovered,that are characterized by ultra depth,ultra-high pressure,ultra-low porosity,ultra-low permeability,high temperature and high pressure.With natural gas geological reserves of nearly trillion cubic meters and production capacity of nearly 5.5 billion cubic meters,the Keshen gas field is the main natural gas producing area in Tarim Oilfield.The Keshen gas field is located in a series of thrusting imbrication structures in the Kelasu structural belt of Kuqa foreland thrust belt.The salt roof structure,plastic rheology of salt beds and pre-salt faulted anticlinal structure constitute the large wedge-shaped thrust body.The thick delta sandstone of the Cretaceous Bashijike Formation is widely distributed,and it forms the superior reservoir-caprock combination with overlying Paleogene thick gypsum-salt bed.The deep Jurassic-Triassic oil and gas migrate vertically along fault system formed in Late Himalaya,break through the thick Cretaceous mudstone and move laterally along the fracture system of the pre-salt reservoirs,to form anticline and fault anticline high pressure reservoir groups.Through near ten years of studies,the three-dimensional seismic acquisition and processing technology for complex mountainous areas,extrusion salt-related structural modeling technology and fractured low-porosity sandstone reservoir evaluation technology have been established,which lay a foundation for realization of oil and gas exploration objectives.Logging acquisition and evaluation technology for high temperature,high pressure,ultra-deep and low-porosity sandstone gas reservoirs,and efficient development technology for fractured tight sandstone gas reservoirs have been developed,which provide a technical support for efficient exploration&development and rapid production of the Keshen gas field.

Hydrocarbon accumulation conditions and key exploration and development technologies for PL 19-3 oilfield

The PL 19e3 Oilfield is the only super-large monolithic oilfield with oil and gas reserves up to 1×10^(9) t in the Bohai Bay Basin,and it has been successfully developed.Exploration and development practices have provided abundant data for analyzing formation conditions of this super-large oilfield.On the basis of the exploration and development history,fundamental reservoir features,and with available geological,geophysical and test data,the hydrocarbon accumulation conditions and key exploration&development technologies of the PL 19e3 Oilfield were discussed.The key conditions for forming the super-large Neogene oilfield include four aspects.Firstly,the oilfield is located at the high position of the uplift that contacts the brachy-axis of the multi-ridge slope in the biggest hydrocarbon-rich sag in the Bohai Bay Basin,thus it has sufficient hydrocarbon source and extremely superior hydrocarbon migration condition.Secondly,the large-scale torsional anticlines which formed in the Neogene under the control of the Tanlu strike-slipping movement provide sufficient storage spaces for oil and gas preservation.Thirdly,the“multiple sets of composite reservoir-caprock assemblages”developing in the special shallow-water delta further contributes greatly to the effective storage space for oil and gas preservation.Fourthly,due to the coupling of the uplift and strike slip in the neotectonic period,extensive faulting activities constantly released the pressure while the late period massive hydrocarbon expulsion of the Bozhong took place at the same time,which assures the constant and intense charging of oil and gas.The super-large PL 19e3 Oilfield was controlled by the coupling effects of all those special geologic factors.In view of this oilfield's features(e.g.violently reformation caused by strike slip,and the special sedimentary environment of shallow-water delta),some key practical technologies for exploration and development have been developed.Such technologies include:the special prestack depth migration processing for gas cloud zones,the prediction of thin interbed reservoirs based on high-precision inversion of geologic model,the reservoir description for the shallow-water braided river delta,the quantitative description for remaining oil in the commingled oil reservoirs with wide well spacing and long well interval,and the well pattern adjustment for formations during high water cut period in the complex fluvial-facies oilfields.

海外油田新项目商务谈判策略实践与启示

2015—2020年,中国石油公司参与了一个海外上游新项目开发的前期商务谈判过程,与国际石油公司A公司合作,同资源国展开了较为艰难的磋商。最终项目因资源国方面因素而搁浅。介绍了该项目的顶层设计和商务谈判思路,从技术开发方案谈判、合同模式谈判、联合作业协议谈判、框架协议谈判4个方面阐述谈判的具体方案和实际进展,剖析了多方博弈中的谈判策略和技巧。该商务谈判的实践案例为中国石油公司未来参与同类型新项目谈判提供了经验和启示。

海外油气勘探项目估值方法与参数选取研究

对于不同勘探开发阶段的海外油气区块,应采用不同的估值方法,估值结果可信度也不同。在海外勘探区块估值和获取实践中,应根据区块的勘探程度、投标参数需求等选择估值方法。探讨了现金流量折现法、预期货币价值法、储量/资源量交易类比法、最小经济规模储量法的使用范围和优缺点。由于勘探区块估值方法的局限性,是否获取区块的决策还要综合考虑公司勘探业务发展战略、区块合同条款、勘探期投入和联合投标等因素。对海外油气勘探区块资源潜力、油气长期价格、基准折现率、项目投产日期估算、勘探开发投资和操作费等估值参数的选取进行分析,提出选取意见。在2012—2021年,应用该套经济评价方法评价了113个海外油气勘探区块,并成功获取了7个勘探区块,取得了良好的应用效果。

拟获取油气项目钻完井技术经济评价方法

中国石油天然气集团有限公司为保证海外油气业务的持续健康发展,须不断获取新的油气勘探开发项目(简称油气项目)。获取油气项目前首先要开展技术经济评价以论证其可获性及获取后的收益性。钻完井工程具有技术密集、资金密集、劳动密集性特点,投资占海外油气开发总投资的40%以上,勘探项目或陆上开发项目甚至能达到80%,钻完井技术经济评价是油气项目技术经济评价过程中重要的一环。论述钻完井技术经济评价流程及其合理、科学、准确性评价要求。提出钻完井工程优化评价、设计评价、类比评价方法并分析各自优缺点,指出未来钻完井技术经济评价方法将以设计评价为主,向快速、智能化方向发展。针对设计评价方法中的快速、科学评价要求,制定钻完井技术经济评价参数与指标体系,建立钻完井快速评价关键技术模型,开发评价软件DPEESS。实践表明,DPEESS系统在数据资料完整的前提下,可实现48h内完成拟获取油气项目钻完井技术经济评价,降低对评价人员的技术经验依赖性,提升拟获取油气项目钻完井技术经济评价的科学性、准确性、合理性、时效性和一致性。

海外石油开发项目风险研究

中国的石油公司在海外石油开发项目中经历了诸多风险,通过文献研究、行业考察等方法,根据海外石油开发项目的特点,结合国际大石油公司的运作模式,分析资源国政治、金融、社会、文化等方面的因素,对风险进行分类识别和细致分析。针对我国石油公司在海外石油开发项目中经历的文化冲突风险、地缘政治风险及能源绿色低碳转型风险,提出了相应的风险规避策略,建议进行文化融合,加强与俄罗斯的战略合作,建立建全的中亚项目应急预案,探索绿色能源与传统油气业务的融合。

海外油气田开发项目的应急管理体系构建与实施

在海外油气田开发项目,需要严格执行资源国法律法规及国际石油行业的良好作业实践,需要有良好的HSE绩效。应急管理体系的构建与实施是保障油田安全有效的一道防线,可以保护投资,提高生产效率,提高安全水平,有利于环境保护。应急管理体系的构建与实施作为HSE管理的重要一环,针对可能发生的事故事件,明确发生事故事件后的汇报流程,对可用的资源和组织机构内的职责进行划分,以应对突发事件的所有方面,包括准备、响应和恢复,最终达到减轻事故事件的不利影响的目的。