Tulsa University, PetroChina Pact Aimed at Developing Energy Technology

By Kirby Lee Davis

PetroChina produced 187 million tons of oil last year, making it the world’s fifth-largest producer. China’s largest petroleum company also delivered 69.3 billion cubic meters of natural gas, ninth highest among world competitors.

But the growing industrial giant that is modern China consumed 346 million tons of oil last year, requiring imports of 159 million tons – almost as many as PetroChina delivered.

With many of its oilfields tapped since the 1960s, PetroChina sees its future in new technologies that will allow it to increase production at mature sites through advanced oil recovery while unlocking vast potential reserves in natural gas.

That’s the message PetroChina Vice President Jia Chengzao delivered Tuesday in signing a memorandum of understanding with University of Tulsa President Steadman Upham.

Through the education and research agreement, both PetroChina and TU officials hope to develop new strategies and technologies that will help China and the U.S. tap and use their remaining fossil fuel reserves more efficiently and effectively.

Although TU, like Oklahoma City University, has numerous relationships with Chinese institutions of higher learning, Tuesday’s agreement represents the first TU has reached with Chinese industry.

It will create formal ties for joint exploration research, and for exchanging graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, with the Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development, PetroChina’s degree-granting research center.

The agreement also will lead to new energy industry training programs, seminars and events, and exchanging publications and academic materials.

Tom Burchfield, director of the TU division Petroleum Abstracts, thanked the Chinese delegation Tuesday for starting that exchange with the RIPED Journal. That publication joins the thousands of others compiled by the Petroleum Abstracts database, a recognized source of international petroleum data.

TU officials hesitated to estimate what other benefits TU might draw from the agreement.

While it could lead to increased staff projects or enrollment, analysts suggested TU could also draw many other benefits, including increasing diversity among the university’s 4,200 students and seeing more alumni in key positions linked to China.

“We are more globalized than before,” said Mahmood Shandiz, senior associate dean of OCU’s business school, commenting on that school’s two decades of interaction with Chinese institutions. “Our faculty traveled overseas and was exposed to different cultures, so they come back with different experiences.”

TU completed its first joint research with RIPED in 2006, comparing industry developments in China and the U.S. to see how prices and government policies impact production. From that it projected how future energy output might pan out in China, to help the Chinese mitigate their dependence on foreign oil.

Burchfield said the next project will compare three large oilfields in China with similar U.S. fields to study new oil production and recovery technologies. He said that 10-month project, which remains under development, should begin in July with two visiting Chinese engineers.

Jia outlined several technological elements RIPED has studied, from 3-D seismic processes to air drilling and water flooding. The company spends a minimum of $85 million each year on RIPED research.

PetroChina plays a dominant role in Chinese energy politics, supplying 57.4 percent of oil production for the nation and 78.2 percent of its natural gas. Ranked as the world’s 30th-largest company last year by Forbes magazine, it charted a 21-percent increase in 2007 sales to $118 billion, although price controls held its earnings hike to just 2.3 percent, totaling $20.5 billion.

Jia forecast PetroChina would increase its oil production to 192 million tons by 2010 and 210 million tons by 2020, rates that fail to keep pace with China’s growing economy. But in natural gas, Jia projected the company would boost production to 90 bcm by 2010 and 150 to 200 bcm by 2020.

PetroChina has several new finds promising sizable reserves, from the 333.1 billion cubic meters of proved natural gas at the Suliege field to many billion tons of oil at the Central Tarin Basin Shoal Reefs and the shoal areas of Bohai Bay Basin, said Jia.

Equally significant, he presented slides of sizable remaining reserves in several mature oilfields, many of which have seen only 25 to 43 percent of their oil withdrawn.

“There is large potential for increasing recovery by advanced technology and enhanced oil recovery,” he said through an interpreter.

Originally published by Kirby Lee Davis.

(c) 2008 Journal Record – Oklahoma City. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.