Status and prospect of igneous oil and gas exploration and development in China

Igneous reservoirs, as the new fields of oil and gas exploration and development, have aroused the concerns and interests of petroleum industry and scholars. However, igneous rocks are dual-medium reservoirs with pores and fractures, so the related exploration and development theories and technologies shall be completed and enriched. In this paper, distribution situations, exploration history and exploration and development status of igneous oil and gas reservoirs in China were reviewed by investigating the related literatures. Then, a series of technologies for the exploration, drilling, completion and reservoir stimulation of igneous oil and gas reservoirs were introduced, including seismic prospecting, lithological identification, lithofacies analysis, logging identification of reservoir lithology, fracture prediction, air drilling, underbalanced drilling, managed pressure drilling, combined drilling, automatic vertical drilling, well completion and the reservoir stimulation technologies for igneous gas reservoirs and fractured heavy oil reservoirs. The challenges to the exploration and development of igneous oil and gas reservoirs in China were analyzed from the aspects of formation mechanisms, exploration difficulties and development bottlenecks of igneous oil and gas reservoirs. And finally, the prospect of igneous oil and gas exploration and development in China was forecasted from the aspects of national energy demand, guarantee of advanced conventional oil and gas exploration and development technologies, leading interdiscipline and advanced foreign experience.