Posted on 06/11/2014 10:48:48 AM PDT by thackney
State-of-the-art American fracking technology is coming to China's vast shale deposits as a result of a joint venture between FTS International and Sinopec announced on Tuesday.
SinoFTS, as the joint venture will be called, marks an important milestone on the road to exporting the North American shale revolution around the world.
FTSI, formerly known as Frac Tech, was one of the first providers more than a decade ago of hydraulic fracturing equipment and services in the Texas Barnett shale, the first shale basin to be developed in the United States.
Since then, the company has grown into the largest supplier of well completion services in U.S. shale formations, including pressure pumping, wireline logging and water management.
FTSI has started to export its expertise around the world through a series of strategic alliances. Since 2012, it has concluded joint ventures with local partners in Brazil as well as Saudi Arabia and Oman.
Other specialist shale drilling and fracking firms are also taking their first steps overseas.
In March, Helmerich & Payne, one of the largest drillers in North America, announced it will transfer 10 of its modern FlexRigs to exploit Argentina's Vaca Muerta shale under a five-year contract with state-owned YPF, which has teamed up with Chevron (Platts Energy Economist, May 1).
Royal Dutch Shell is developing plans with local partners to produce shale gas from beneath South Africa's Karoo semi-desert wilderness.
But this is the first time that a specialist hydraulic fracturing firm from North America has entered the Chinese market.
TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
"SinoFTS will serve both Sinopec and other exploration and production companies throughout China...
The joint venture will initially concentrate on Sichuan, China's most promising shale play, with operations expected to commence there in 2015...
"SinoFTS will use new equipment that FTSI will custom-manufacture in the United States...
(Excerpt) Read more at rigzone.com ...
Topics continued in article include:
Enormous Gas Potential
Geological Challenges
American Shale Expertise
Didn’t the geologists recently downgrade the potential of China’s shale deposits? I know they are still worth exploiting, but I thought they were not as vast a resource as once thought.
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Thx thackney. Wish you had a little ping list. I would want on it. Rita
I think that its good that China will be able to exploit their natural gas resources.
I hate that US technology will be ripped off—which is what inevitably happens when these companies go to china.
Five years from now some spinoff of Sinopec will be competing directly against FTSI. The spinoff will have stolen all the details of the business and business model from FTSI—with the help of the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) computer spies.
I wonder whether this ups the market potential for a nat gas f150 in the Chinese market.
How long before Ford offers a CNG f150 in China? How big is that opportunity for Ford?
I like using keywords. If you bookmark the following, you can see the current energy articles at Free Republic at any time.
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/energy/index
I try to add that as well as oil, naturalgas, hydrofrac, etc to any article I see that is in the topic.
I think it will effect coal power plants much sooner and to a greater impact.
Just the way teh “progressives” of both parties like it.
I remember them being more expensive:
China faces slow shale rise
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/latest/china-faces-slow-shale-rise/story-e6frg90f-1226937284355
China Seen Outspending U.S. Drillers to Chase Shale-Gas Boom
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-29/china-seen-outspending-u-s-drillers-to-chase-shale-gas-boom.html
I see the Bloomberg article is citing the 26 Trillion Cubic Feet figure, but I thought I had seen an article downgrading that number significantly, which of course I can’t find now. But it seems these numbers fluctuate quite a bit anyway.
I don’t think their exploration into Shale is significant enough to have decent data at this point for a total country technically producible reserve figure.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that China has total reserves of 1,275 trillion cubic feet of shale gas,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jackperkowski/2013/06/13/shale-gas-chinas-untapped-resource/
I’ve seen that number posted before, too. I recall my Natural Resources professor, who was Director of the Indiana Geological Survey, telling us “resources are what’s there, reserves are what you think you can extract.” The one number theoretically never changes, but the other one does all the time based on technological advances.
While they may or may not be correct, they are talking about producible reserves, not total resource in place.
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