Abstract
Energy return on investment (EROI) and net energy are useful metrics for analyzing energy production physically rather than monetarily. However, these metrics are not widely applied in China. In this study, we forecast the Daqing oilfield’s EROI from 2013 to 2025 using existing data for crude oil and natural gas production and the basic rules of EROI. Unfortunately, our calculations indicate that the oilfield’s EROI will continuously decline from 7.3 to 4.7, and the associated net energy will continuously decline from 1.53 × 1012 MJ to 1.25 × 1012 MJ. If China’s energy intensity does not decline as planned in the next ten years, then the EROI of Daqing will be even lower than our estimates. Additionally, relating the EROI to the monetary return on investment (MROI) in a low production and high intensity scenario, Daqing’s EROI will decline to 2.9 and its MROI will decline to 1.8 by 2025. If the “law of minimum EROI” and the assumed “minimum MROI” are taken into account, then we estimate that both energy pressure and economic pressure will restrict Daqing’s production by 2025.
Highlights
The Daqing oilfield is China’s largest oilfield and is one of the largest oilfields in the world; the area is more than 6000 square kilometers
We further introduce the concept of monetary return on investment (MROI) and find that the Daqing’s MROI experiences a decline
Considering the Energy return on investment (EROI) trend of the High Production Scenario, we find that Daqing’s MROI changes so minimally that there is no need to distinguish it between the two scenarios
Summary
The Daqing oilfield is China’s largest oilfield and is one of the largest oilfields in the world; the area is more than 6000 square kilometers. The Daqing oilfield has been responsible for three “firsts”: the first oil production, the first tax-based enterprise, and the first recovery of China’s oil industry. The Daqing oil field continues to play a decisive role in maintaining the security of China’s oil supply. To maintain its position and achieve sustainable development, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) proposed the following objectives in 2004: establish a centurial oilfield [1], stabilize 40 million tons of annual oil by 2020, and recover an oil and gas equivalent of 50 million tons by2012 [2]. The Chinese government aims to make Daqing a vital oil and gas production base for China through 2060, at which point the oilfield will have been exploited for 100 years. The oil production holdout is attributed to technological advances, the use of increasing water pressure beneath the oil and polymer flooding technology (i.e., tertiary oil recovery technology) to maintain oil production and control water content
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