China’s Sinopec Corp. said on Tuesday it had made a significant breakthrough in its shale gas exploration in the country’s southwestern Sichuan basin with the successful drilling of two wells.

It completed drilling at the Ziyang-2 well at a depth of 6,666 metres and a daily production of 1.257 million cubic metres, and at the Jinye-3 well with a daily production of 826,000 cubic metres at a depth of 5,850 metres, the company said in a statement.

Under President Xi Jinping’s call to boost domestic energy supply, China’s national energy champions are accelerating the development of more costly, geologically challenging oil and gas resources.

Technologies such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing are widely applied to produce gas from shale and other tight rock formations.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Emily Chow and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Mark Potter)