Sinopec granted China’s first ISO Technical Specification for heavy oil development

Sinopec, China’s Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, has successfully obtained ISO's approval for the Technical Specifications for Multi-element Thermal Composite Flooding of Heavy Oil proposed by academician Sun Huanquan's team. Leveraging Sinopec's independent technologies, the technical specification is China's first to receive approval in the field of heavy oil thermal recovery and will promote international technical cooperation and global heavy oil development upon release.

Heavy oil, referring to crude oil of high density and viscosity, accounts for 36% of global proved oil reserves. China's annual production of heavy oil has exceeded 15 million tons for 13 consecutive years.

Due to land-phase sedimentation and complex geological conditions, China's heavy oil reserves are buried deep with thin oil layers, which presents challenges for developments such as flow speed and distance. With the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Sinopec's key science and technology projects, Sun Huanquan's team focused on tackling the bottlenecks of heavy oil development and innovated the multi-element thermal compositive development technology that has been applied on a large scale in Shengli and Henan oilfields, which enables Sinopec to achieve annual heavy oil production of over 4.8 million tons.

Next, Sun Huanquan and the team will set up an international working group with technical experts from the U.S., Saudi Arabia and other countries following ISO's requirements to speed up the drafting of the international standard and release it at the earliest availability.