CSIRO recharges energy ties with China

The alliance strengthens long-term cooperation and research into oil and gas exploration and production as well as wider energy technologies, reaffirming the 20 year relationship between CSIRO and the Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development (RIPED), the research arm of PetroChina.

CSIRO’s Group Executive for Energy Dr Beverley Ronalds says “the agreement is a great boost to Australia’s working partnership with China and recognises our reputation and achievements in delivering world-class technology and research for the oil and gas industry.”

“PetroChina is one of the major producers and distributors of petroleum and petrochemical products in the world and is focused on improving its innovation and establishing long-term efficient mechanisms for safety, environmental protection and energy conservation,” says Dr Ronalds.

“CSIRO is strongly positioned to provide innovative solutions to address these very challenges.

CSIRO recently developed technology to characterise and better predict the presence and quantity of oil in China’s unique petroleum producing basins, reducing the costly risk of drilling dry wells.

“CSIRO technologies are already helping China address the challenges of its diverse geological environments,” CSIRO Petroleum’s Chinese program coordinator and Project Leader, Dr Keyu Liu, says.

“China has young lake basins in the east and old basins in the west that have a complicated oil charge history, conditions where conventional analytical methods used to find oil are ineffective.”
 
The CSIRO technologies are now licensed to PetroChina and include the Fluorescence Alteration of Multiple Macerals (FAMM) and the Quantitative Grain Fluorescence (QGF) and QGF on grain extracts (QGF-E). The in-house techniques are being applied to understand oil generation, migration and accumulation events and petroleum charge history in a number of basins in China.

“The techniques are already delivering significant benefits to PetroChina, not only are they inexpensive but they have a short turn-around time,” Dr Ronalds says.

“CSIRO is proud its technologies, applied through China University of Petroleum, helped PetroChina discover a giant oilfield with a reserve of over 7 billion barrels in the Bohai Bay area last year.”

The strategic agreement identifies a number of areas for potential collaboration in addition to joint research activities, such as training and development, exchange of graduate students, visiting scholars and post-doc researchers, and the sharing of research and information; providing additional opportunities to broaden interactions with the Western Australian Energy Research Alliance.

The alliance also includes IFP and Stanford University and will officially be signed on the 23 October in China by CSIRO’s Dr Beverley Ronalds and RIPED President Daofu Wang, at RIPED’s President Forum – a prestigious invitation only event including senior representatives from the major world oil companies.

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