After an investigation with his team in Yichang, Li Jinfa, deputy director of China Geological Survey (CGS), hosted a meeting to exchange the findings about Yichang’s oil and gas resources and promote the project from Nov. 29th to Nov. 30th. Huang Chuping, member of Provincial Standing Committee and secretary of Yichang Municipal Committee met with Li Jinfa and his team.

　　Huang showed a warm welcome to Li and his team for CGS’ vigorous support to the development of new energy in Yichang and Hubei province. He said, as a clean and economical energy with huge commercial value, shale gas does have significant meaning for optimizing energy structure, promoting industrial upgrading and improving people’s livelihood. Hubei is one of the major provinces of economy and energy consumption, the demonstration of oil and gas exploration in Yichang shows the close attention and vigorous support from CGS to Hubei province and Yichang city. Meanwhile, he hoped that more attention from CGS could be paid to Hubei province and Yichang city to help it strive for a clean energy city. Yichang municipal government will ensure quality rear service and security guarantee to create a favorable environment for shale gas’ exploration and development.

　　There is enormous potential for the exploration and development of shale gas in Yichang since it is abundant in mineral resources and CGS has made obvious achievement over the shale gas investigation in Yichang, Li said. He also showed that CGS will make full effort to accelerate the geological investigation for the development of new energy in Hubei province and Yichang city, and promote its commercial use.

　　It is learnt that CGS has successively carried out basic geological investigations about shale gas in Yichang since 2013. Based on the important discoveries, CGS decided to establish a 2,000-km2 exploration and demonstration area of oil and gas resources in Yichang so that the new base can play a leading role for the enterprises in the field of oil and gas exploration. So far, the drilling work has been carried out in several gas wells, including EYang No. 1 Shale Gas Well, EYi No. 1 Shale Gas Well, No. 2 Shale Gas Well in Yichang, No. 1 & 2 Shale Gas Wells in Zigui County, and it has been shown that quality shale gas exists in all the wells above.

　　Ma Xuming, deputy secretary of the municipal government and mayor of the city, and Ma Xuejun, member and secretary-general of the municipal Standing Committee also attended the meeting. (Journalist Lei Pengcheng)