PROGRESS IN EXPLORATION, DEVELOPMENT AND UTILIZATION OF OIL SHALE IN CHINA

The huge oil shale resources in China have gradually attracted widespread attention due to the shortage of oil and gas resources in the country and the rapid recovery of world oil prices. A nationwide prospecting survey of oil shale in China was conducted for the first time during a period from 2003 to 2006, reporting on around 719.9 billion tons of oil shale. After that, many large oil shale deposits have been discovered in the country, and the exploration of oil shale is flourishing. Although the total shale oil production from oil shale of China has been fluctuating due to the low world oil prices in recent years, it, in general, has rapidly increased since 2006 and reached the highest annual production of 8.3 x 10(5) tons in 2015. At present, there are six oil shale production bases in operation in China, and two sets of pilot experiments carried out on oil shale in-situ conversion technology have preliminarily proved to be successful. A green industrial chain including refinery, power generation and building materials production from oil shale in oil shale enterprises has been formed due to the high added value and environmentally friendly impact of oil shale from this chain. Moreover, new insights were gained into the genesis of terrestrial oil shale in China and the characterization of deep lake, shallow lake and limnetic deposited oil shale. These theoretical breakthroughs further enriched the genesis theory of oil shale in continental basins. Although considerable progress has been made in China in the oil shale field both industrially and academically, more work needs to be done to establish a representative oil shale metallogenic model and to accurately evaluate oil shale for its development potential.