Jianliang Wang

A review of physical supply and EROI of fossil fuels in China

This paper reviews China’s future fossil fuel supply from the perspectives of physical output and net energy output. Comprehensive analyses of physical output of fossil fuels suggest that China’s total oil production will likely reach its peak, at about 230xa0Mt/year (or 9.6xa0EJ/year), in 2018; its total gas production will peak at around 350xa0Bcm/year (or 13.6xa0EJ/year) in 2040, while coal production will peak at about 4400xa0Mt/year (or 91.9xa0EJ/year) around 2020 or so. In terms of the forecast production of these fuels, there are significant differences among current studies. These differences can be mainly explained by different ultimately recoverable resources assumptions, the nature of the models used, and differences in the historical production data. Due to the future constraints on fossil fuels production, a large gap is projected to grow between domestic supply and demand, which will need to be met by increasing imports. Net energy analyses show that both coal and oil and gas production show a steady declining trend of EROI (energy return on investment) due to the depletion of shallow-buried coal resources and conventional oil and gas resources, which is generally consistent with the approaching peaks of physical production of fossil fuels. The peaks of fossil fuels production, coupled with the decline in EROI ratios, are likely to challenge the sustainable development of Chinese society unless new abundant energy resources with high EROI values can be found.

Possible Trends of Chinese Oil Supply Through 2030

In China, there are many who know that while oil production has increased steadily for several decades that oil is a finite substance whose production at some point cannot continue to increase. When will that time come? There have been a number of attempts to predict that as is developed in the next section.

Modeling India’s Coal Production with a Negatively Skewed Curve-Fitting Model

India’s coal demand is forecast to increase at a rapid pace in the future due to the country’s economic and population growth. Analyzing the scope for future production of India’s domestic coal resources, therefore, plays a vital role in the country’s development of sound energy policies. This paper presents a quantitative scenario analysis of India’s potential future coal production by using a negatively skewed curve-fitting model and a range of estimates of the country’s ultimately recoverable resources (URR) of coal. The results show that the resource base is sufficient for India’s coal production to keep increasing over the next few decades, to reach between 2400 and 3200 Mt/y at 2050, depending on the assumed value of URR. A further analysis shows that the high end of this range, which corresponds to our ‘GSI’ scenario, can be considered as the probable upper-bound to India’s domestic coal production. Comparison of production based on the ‘GSI’ scenario with India’s predicted demand shows that the domestic production of coal will be insufficient to meet the country’s rising coal demand, with the gap between demand and production increasing from its current value of about 268 Mt/y to reach 300 Mt/y in 2035, and 700 Mt/y by 2050. This increasing gap will be challenging for the energy security of India.

Water use for shale gas extraction in the Sichuan Basin, China

This study investigates the use of water for extracting shale gas in the Sichuan Basin of China. Both net water use and water intensity (i.e., water use per unit of gas produced) of shale wells are estimated by applying a process-based life cycle inventory (LCI) model. The results show that the net water use and water intensity are around 24500u202fm3/well and 1.9u202fm3 water/104u202fm3 gas respectively, and that the fracturing and completion stage of shale gas extraction accounts for the largest share in net water use. A comparison shows that Chinas water use for shale gas extraction is generally higher than that of other countries. By considering the predicted annual drilling activities in the Sichuan Basin, we find that the annual water demand for shale gas development is likely to be negligible compared to total regional water supply. However, considering the water demand for shale gas extraction and the water demand from other sectors may make water availability a significant concern for Chinas shale gas development in the future.

Establishment of a multi-cycle generalized Weng model and its application in forecasts of global oil supply

Low oil prices under the influence of economic structure transformation and slow economic growth have hit the existing markets of traditional big oil suppliers and upgraded the conflict of oil production capacity and interest between OPEC producers and other big oil supplier countries such as the USA and Russia. Forecasting global oil production is significant for all countries for energy strategy planning, although many past forecasts have later been proved to be very seriously incorrect. In this paper, the original generalized Weng model is expanded to a multi-cycle generalized Weng model to better reflect the multi-cycle phenomena caused by political, economic and technological factors. This is used to forecast global oil production based on parameter selection from a large sample, depletion rate of remaining resources, constraints on oil reserves and cycle number determination. This research suggests that the world will reach its peak oil production in 2022, at about 4340xa0×xa0106xa0tonnes. China needs to plan for oil import diversity, a domestic oil production structure based on the supply pattern of large oil suppliers worldwide and the oil demand for China’s own development.

Comprehensive Analysis of the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) of China

Whether or when peak oil occurs there is another, related issue that we think may be as or perhaps even more impactful, and certainly more general. This is a suite of specific concerns that surround the concept of Energy Return on Investment (EROI). We turn to this next.

The History of Chinese Oil Industry Development

This book provides a comprehensive and detailed overview of the Chinese oil industry, its four historical phases and its role in the industrialization of China. Resources and exploration, pipeline development, refining and marketing, petroleum and natural gas pricing policies, and international cooperation are all addressed, as are conservation, renewable energy resources, and environmental impacts. Also presented are peak oil models and a forecast of future trends in fossil fuel supplies through the middle of the twenty-first century. A key consideration is the declining trend in energy returned on energy invested (EROI) for oil and natural gas in China, which technology seems unable to reverse and which will have enormous consequences for the country’s economic prospects. The future of China’s coal production is also discussed.

Developmental Features of the Chinese Petroleum Industry in Recent Years

China’s oil industry has developed more than 60 years since the establishment of China in 1949, creating many achievements in exploration, development and production to meet the increasing needs for oil. What is the current situation of the Chinese oil industry? The next section analysis that.