About State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation

State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation

The State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation is a national research laboratory jointly hosted by Chengdu University of Technology and Southwest Petroleum University, both in Chengdu, Sichuan. It is described in university sources as the only national key laboratory of its kind in China's petroleum industry, and as a base for scientific research, experimental research, academic exchange and high-level personnel training in that industry. Its dual hosting reflects the complementary strengths of its two parent universities: Chengdu University of Technology brings a long tradition in geology and sedimentary basin research, while Southwest Petroleum University brings petroleum engineering, reservoir development and exploitation technology. Together they cover the full chain from understanding how oil and gas accumulate underground to designing how those resources can be produced.

Origins and Establishment

The laboratory was established in 1990 with the approval of the National Planning Commission of China and the National Education Commission, according to accounts published in the scientific literature drawing on the laboratory's own history. A related account of Southwest Petroleum University's history records that approval for construction of the State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Development Engineering was given in 1989, with a postdoctoral research station established in 1991, placing the laboratory among the generation of state key laboratories created as China systematised its national laboratory network in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The laboratory subsequently passed national evaluations with good results, including evaluations noted for 2000, 2005 and 2010 in published sources.

Its institutional roots run deeper than the 1990 approval date. Chengdu University of Technology was founded in 1956 as the Chengdu Institute of Geology, formed from geology-related faculties transferred from institutions including Chongqing University, Nanjing University, Northwest University, the Beijing Institute of Geology and the Northeast College of Geology. Through more than six decades of accumulation, the laboratory's supporting discipline of petroleum geology and exploration at Chengdu University of Technology, together with the discipline of geology — identified by the Ministry of Education as one of the first world-class disciplines — provided the academic foundation on which the laboratory was built. Southwest Petroleum University, founded in 1958 in the context of petroleum development in Sichuan, likewise contributed its national key discipline in oil and gas field development engineering, established in 1988.

Host Institutions in Chengdu

Both host universities are located in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province in southwest China, close to the Sichuan Basin, one of China's major oil- and gas-bearing basins. Published affiliations give the laboratory's Chengdu University of Technology address in Chengdu 610059 and its Southwest Petroleum University address in Chengdu 610500, reflecting the two sites at which laboratory researchers work. Chengdu University of Technology lists the laboratory as one of its two state key laboratories, alongside the State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection. Southwest Petroleum University similarly lists it among its national-level laboratories. The joint structure means that papers, patents and projects carry affiliations to either or both universities, and graduate training is shared across the two institutions.

Research Orientation

University descriptions summarise the laboratory's research orientations concisely as oil and gas reservoir geology and exploitation engineering. Chengdu University of Technology's account identifies three stable research directions formed over its history. The first is petroliferous basin dynamics and oil and gas accumulation theory, concerned with how sedimentary basins evolve and how hydrocarbons are generated, migrate and accumulate. The second is oil and gas reservoir geology theory and evaluation technology, concerned with the characterisation of reservoir rocks, their pore systems and their capacity to store and yield oil and gas. The third is geophysical prediction methods and techniques for complex oil and gas reservoirs, concerned with using seismic and other geophysical data to image and predict reservoirs that are structurally or lithologically complicated.

In 2021, according to the same university account, the laboratory developed new directions in response to national energy strategy and frontier developments. These include geological-engineering integration for oil and gas reservoirs and equipment, and the evaluation and development of geothermal resources. That expansion reflects a broader shift in Chinese petroleum research, in which laboratories originally focused on conventional reservoirs increasingly address integration between geology and engineering practice, and apply subsurface expertise to geothermal energy as well as hydrocarbons.

Reservoir Geology and Pore Evolution

A central theme in the laboratory's published work is the geology of reservoirs themselves, including the diagenetic and pore evolution of clastic reservoirs noted in the laboratory profile. Diagenesis — the physical and chemical changes sediments undergo after deposition — determines whether a sandstone retains the porosity and permeability needed to function as a reservoir, or loses them through compaction and cementation. Laboratory researchers address this through petrographic study of thin sections and polished slabs, sedimentary facies analysis and reconstruction of palaeoenvironments, as illustrated by published studies of Cambrian microbialites in the Qingxudong Formation in northwestern Hunan, in which samples were prepared and classified at the laboratory's Chengdu University of Technology site using established carbonate classifications.

Work on the Sichuan Basin illustrates the basin-scale end of this research. A widely cited study by laboratory authors examined the basic geological features of the superimposed Sichuan Basin and its hydrocarbon accumulation, describing three major phases of basin evolution during the Phanerozoic, abundant hydrocarbon supply and excellent preservation conditions, and arguing that the basin retains great natural gas exploration potential. Such studies connect outcrop and subsurface observation to exploration strategy for an entire basin.

Exploitation Technology and Unconventional Reservoirs

Alongside geology, the laboratory works on exploitation technology — the engineering of production from reservoirs once they are found. Published research from the laboratory addresses shale oil and shale gas reservoirs, fractured horizontal wells, hydraulic fracturing and productivity analysis using discrete fracture network models. One study developed a numerical method based on finite element modelling for productivity analysis of a fractured horizontal well in a shale gas reservoir with complex fractures, reflecting the importance of massive hydraulic fracturing to the economical development of shale gas. Other work has addressed coalbed methane evaluation in the Sichuan Longtan Formation, low-permeability shale permeability evaluation for optimising horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracturing, and material balance models for shale oil reservoirs.

This unconventional-reservoir focus aligns the laboratory with a major direction in Chinese energy research. China has pursued shale gas development particularly in the Sichuan Basin and surrounding areas, and the laboratory's combination of reservoir characterisation and production modelling is directed at the practical problem of extracting gas and oil from rocks of very low permeability, where geology and engineering cannot be separated.

Marine Gas Hydrate Research

One of the laboratory's most distinctive achievements is in marine natural gas hydrate exploitation. In April 2015, the world's first marine non-diagenetic gas hydrate solid fluidisation exploitation laboratory was inaugurated at Southwest Petroleum University. Published accounts describe how Southwest Petroleum University, cooperating with the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and Sichuan Honghua Petroleum Equipment, invented an experimental simulation method and technology for solid fluidisation exploitation, achieving overall process simulation for conditions corresponding to a water depth of 1,500 metres and a pipeline length of 4,500 metres. The resulting large physical experimental simulation system was described as the world's first of its kind, developed with completely independent intellectual property rights.

Solid fluidisation is an approach in which shallow, non-diagenetic hydrate deposits on the seabed are broken up and transported as a slurry, rather than produced by depressurisation or heating in place. The laboratory's physical simulation work on this method, including research described in the laboratory profile as physical simulation of marine gas hydrate production, represents an attempt to create an experimental basis for a production technology that remains at the research stage worldwide.

Facilities, Training and Academic Exchange

As a state key laboratory, the institution is expected to function as more than a collection of research groups. University descriptions characterise it explicitly as a base for scientific research, experimental research, academic exchange and high-level personnel training in the petroleum industry. Its experimental work — thin-section and slab preparation, petrophysical measurement, and large-scale physical simulation systems such as the hydrate facility — depends on shared laboratory infrastructure at the two host universities. Its training role is exercised through master's and doctoral programmes in geology, petroleum engineering and related fields at Chengdu University of Technology and Southwest Petroleum University, both of which operate postdoctoral stations connected with the laboratory's disciplines.

The laboratory's researchers publish extensively in Chinese and international journals in petroleum geology, geophysics and reservoir engineering, and its affiliations appear in studies ranging from Cambrian stratigraphy and the Carnian Pluvial Episode in the Sichuan Basin to shale reservoir characterisation in the Ordos Basin. That breadth illustrates how a laboratory defined by oil and gas reservoirs also contributes to fundamental sedimentary geology, because understanding reservoirs requires understanding the full history of the basins that contain them.

Place in China's Petroleum Research System

Within China's research system, state key laboratories are the top tier of nationally supported laboratories in a field, subject to periodic national evaluation. The laboratory's claim, repeated in university sources, to be the only national key laboratory in the petroleum industry underlines its intended role as the national centre for reservoir geology and exploitation research. Its joint hosting by a geology-centred university and a petroleum-centred university, both in the same city and both serving the Sichuan Basin, is an institutional expression of its subject: the meeting point of earth science and production engineering.

Continuing Directions

The directions added in 2021 — geological-engineering integration and geothermal resource evaluation and development — point to how the laboratory is positioning itself for the next phase of its work. Geological-engineering integration seeks to close the gap between describing a reservoir and producing from it, a gap that is especially costly in complex and unconventional reservoirs. Geothermal work applies the laboratory's subsurface characterisation skills to a low-carbon energy resource. Alongside continuing work on basin dynamics, reservoir evaluation, geophysical prediction and hydrate exploitation, these directions keep the laboratory centred on its founding question — how oil and gas reservoirs form, how they can be understood in detail, and how they can be produced — while extending its methods to new energy questions.