Challenges to sustainable large-scale shale gas development in China

Abstract

China's shale gas production has grown annually by 21% since 2017 with long-term national energy strategy calling for continued expansion. This large-scale shale gas development is challenged by constraints on water supply. It requires over 6,000 new wells to be drilled within the Yangtze River Basin in South China-one of China's most populated regions with sensitive ecological and geological conditions, posing significant environmental threats to the hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. Hydraulic fracturing-induced seismicity also adds to the existing earthquake risk for the Sichuan/Chongqing region. These potential negative impacts challenge both China's and the United Nations' sustainable development goals. We explore China's current shale gas operations in the Yangtze River Basin and their interaction with the environment from these multiple perspectives. We then suggest future improvements to practice that will promote sustainable development to jointly satisfy China's burgeoning energy needs. We conclude that China's shale gas industry would benefit from an innovation ecosystem that involves companies and research institutions, and that there is an urgent need to implement environmental regulations for shale gas extraction.

Keywords: GHG emissions; environmental risks; induced seismicity; shale gas; water stress.

Fig. 1.

Current shale gas fields (A–J) are predominantly located in the drainage area of the Yangtze River, which is home to several ecological reserves (1–12). Six megacities with over 10 million inhabitants are located along the Yangtze River: Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Changsha, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. High water stress is apparent in the region with recent minor to severe droughts. Large-scale shale gas development in the region poses severe environmental threats to water, air, plants, and wildlife and increased hazards from induced earthquakes. Several notable earthquakes are believed possibly linked to fluid-injection-induced fault reactivation (–16). The epicenter of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake is <300 km away from the shale gas development area. Earthquakes b–d are suspected to be some of the largest hydraulic fracturing-induced earthquakes worldwide.

Fig. 2.

(A) China’s well life cycle GHG emissions are between 12.27 and 39.71 gCO₂eq/MJ (, –25). (B) Estimates of China’s CO₂-equivalent annual emissions from shale gas production through 2060, based on the current rate of development and well GHG emissions (preproduction, production, and processing). Annual production is expressed as a quadratic function, and per-well production rate is taken as 0.2 × 10⁸ m³. The red-shaded area denotes the upper and lower boundaries of the estimate. (C) Time series of total methane emissions and methane emissions from oil and gas in China and the United States (28). (D) Composition of methane emissions from oil and gas in China and the rest of the world (29).