OREANDA-NEWS. July 03, 2013. State-owned China National Petroleum Corp said on Jun 19 it has started building the country's first dedicated shale gas pipeline in central Sichuan province.

The pipeline will stretch 92.8 kilometers (58 miles), linking gas production wells in the Changning block to the Shuanghe gas processing station. It will have a capacity of 4.5 million cubic meters/day.

The pipeline will carry gas produced from the Changning-Weiyuan shale gas demonstration zone in the province, CNPC said. It did not say when the pipeline is due for completion.

In a report published last week, Bernstein Research said CNPC is drilling 15 horizontal shale wells at Changning to assess project feasibility before making a decision on full-scale development. Flow rates were better than expected, with one well in particular producing 150,000 cu m/day after fracture stimulation, the report said.

According to ECF International Shale Gas Forum, this dedicated shale gas pipeline built by CNPC indicated a feasible alternative to China shale gas commercialization. Shale gas explorers can build their own shale gas pipelines connecting drilling wells with major natural gas pipelines, in order to cut transportation cost and enable the future large-scale shale gas production to enter the market as soon as possible.

However, most of the major natural gas pipelines are still belong to CNPC. It is still an obstacle for China shale gas commercialized production that how can these non-CNPC companies gain access to the major pipelines without paying extra high cost.

3rd ECF Asia Shale Gas Summit (Shanghai) 2013 will be held on Oct 15-17, 2013 in Shanghai, China. Experts from China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau will introduce the natural gas pipelines in China and pipeline transportation for shale gas.