CNPC’s major research and development progresses, evaluated and chosen by our research institutions and experts every year, represent our annual remarkable achievements in major scientific and technological projects and progresses in technology integration and application, in terms of oil & gas exploration and production, refining and chemical, engineering and construction, and equipment manufacturing.

All these reflect the improvement of CNPC’s core competitiveness and independent innovation, and provide enhanced technical support to sustained and coordinated growth of the company.

The Company implements actively an innovation-driven strategy focusing on major bottlenecks in key areas. Debottlenecking in core technologies and forward-looking, basic and strategic research are further strengthened and commercialization of new technologies for productivity gains is accelerated to achieve fruitful results in E&P, refining and petrochemicals, low-carbon and new energies, and oilfield services etc.

Major R&D Achievements in 2022

Exploration and Production

Geological theories and E&P techniques for ultra-deep oil/gas bolstered high-efficiency exploration and large-scale plus cost-effective exploitation; geological theories on the development of continental shale oil and key engineering techniques were applied in demonstration areas, i.e. Daqing, Xinjiang, Changqing and Dagang etc.; E&P theories and techniques for deep coal-seam methane, integrated techniques for gas flooding and underground gas storage, and geological theories for passive continental margins made breakthrough; major breakthroughs were achieved in multi-strata exploration in central Sichuan through refined characterization of the distribution of Sinian-Permian strike-slip faults in Sichuan Basin, innovation in trap/reservoir control and high-efficiency drainage in lithological strike-slip faults, and a new 3D model of reservoir forming and multiple accumulation.

Refining & Chemicals

The commercial production of low-viscosity polyalpha-olefin (PAO) facilitates an upgrade of lubricating base oils; a 20,000 t/a 1,4-cyclohexanedimethanol (CHDM) pilot project was successfully launched, making CNPC the third company in the world to have the full-industrial-chain capabilities for the manufacturing of PETG copolyesters; metallocene polyethylene production technology bolsters the development of high-end polyolefin industry; the proprietary flexible and high-efficiency catalytic cracking process and the high-carbon alpha-olefin polyethylene copolymer process and products made significant progress.

Oilfield Services

The industrial application of the one-click interactive 7,000-meter automated drilling rig made reliability improvements, i.e. a lower failure rate and an improved rig uptime; the CG STEER-150 geosteering-while-drilling system was widely applied with the purchase and service costs greatly reduced; the CG STEER-175-15 prototype was developed, demonstrating world-leading performance on all fronts; the 76mm ultra-high temperature, ultra-high pressure wireline logging equipment, and high temperature, high pressure azimuth electromagnetic wave imaging logging-while-drilling equipment were successfully applied in deep-layer hydrocarbon exploration; intelligent zonal water injection technology promotes the formation of a fine and efficient development model with water flooding; key technologies for the prevention and control of severe lost circulation help to improve the safety, quality and efficiency of well drilling and completion; OBN seismic exploration technology and equipment innovation lead the leapfrog development of marine operations; R&D breakthrough and wide application of next-generation plug-and-perf techniques were achieved; significant breakthroughs have been made in key technologies for single point mooring and offshore pipeline construction; major progress was achieved in passive magnetic steering, 240 ℃ ultra-high temperature eco-friendly wellbore working fluids.

New Energies and Green & Low-Carbon

Major progress was made in key technologies throughout the CCUS industry chain, integrated and high-efficiency utilization of geothermal energy, and manufacturing of wide-temperature, high-power lithium titanate battery materials and cells.

Frontier Technology

The Company has been developing new theories, methods and technologies in line with the development needs for the future and international tech trends.

Breakthrough progress was achieved in ion-engineered, micronano-dispersion water flooding to increase the displacement efficiency by more than 15%; the research on miscibility of hydrocarbon systems revealed the heat-assisted mechanism of “in situ cracking + bidirectional mass transfer” to reduce greatly the miscibility pressure and enable a significant improvement in gas injection based EOR; important advances were made in insitu catalytic upgrading of high-viscosity crude oil, revealing the key deposition points and targeted modification mechanisms for asphaltene structures in ultra-heavy oil to enable a revolutionary technology for cost-effective ultra-heavy oil production; a new microflow reaction method for continuous polymerization of liquid rubber and the high-concentration polymerization technology were developed to bolster our strength and competitiveness in synthetic rubber; the catalysts for polar copolymerization were developed to produce ethylene-based polar copolymers such as ethylene methyl acrylate (EMA), so as to facilitate the development of new materials.