China discovers 02 major shale gas fields in boost for energy security.

Aug 2025 : Striving to achieve Self Reliance along with eliminating its dependency on foreign energy supplies, China has rapidly built up a domestic shale gas industry; it has discovered deep shale gas reserves in two major gas fields in the southwest, each holding more than 100 billion cubic metres (bcm) of proven reserves, as the country continues its push for greater energy security.

The state-owned China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec) said late Thursday that the government had certified 165 bcm of natural gas reserves at the Hongxing field, which spans Hubei province and Chongqing municipality. “It proves the Hongxing region’s strong resource potential and this new strategic shale gas reserve contributes to national energy security”, Sinopec said in a statement. Sinopec also disclosed last week that the Ministry of Natural Resources had certified a further 124.6 bcm of geological reserves in the Yangchuan shale field – a site in the Sichuan Basin that was founded in 2016 and had 23.5 bcm of reserves verified in 2019.

The reserves at both of the newly discovered shale gas fields lie in rock layers more than 3.3 kilometres underground, with complex structural deformation that will make exploration and extraction challenging. Sinopec said it was working on developing technology to address these difficulties. The company has been exploring the Sichuan Basin – a region of southwestern China rich in deep-layer oil and gas resources – for more than a decade. So far, it has discovered five large shale gas fields in the area, including a site in Fuling with 01 trillion cubic metres of reserves and four 100-bcm-class fields in Weirong, Qijiang, Yangchuan and Hongxing, according to the statement.

China has been pushing to increase its domestic energy production in recent years, as it seeks to reduce its dependence on foreign oil and gas supplies. The country’s latest five-year plan, which covers 2021 to 2025, calls for boosting domestic oil and gas supplies to bolster national energy security, including by exploring unconventional resources such as shale oil, shale gas and coal bed methane.

The Ministry of Finance announced in March that it would extend a clean energy support fund launched in 2020, which covers shale gas and coal bed methane drilling, up to 2029. In 2024, China produced 246.4 bcm of natural gas, including 25.7 bcm of shale gas, according to data reported by China Petrochemical News, a newspaper run by Sinopec.

Currently, China is one of only four countries in the world – alongside the United States, Canada and Argentina – producing shale gas at a commercial scale, according to a report from the US Energy Information Administration published in September.

Team Maverick