China has got a big treasure amid the tariff war that broke out with America. China has discovered two shale oilfields. The total reserves of these two oil reserves are 180 million tonnes. China is heavily dependent on exports for fossil fuels and the new discovery will strengthen its efforts to reduce dependence on exports.
China’s largest oil refiner company Sinopec announced these discoveries on Monday. The company said the oil reserves are located in the Bohai Gulf Basin in northeastern China and the Subei Basin in the eastern province of Jiangsu.
According to a report by China’s state news agency Xinhua, preliminary assessments show that both shale oil fields have the potential to produce oil stably over a long period of time. This is the first time China has used domestically developed standards to evaluate shale oil reserves.
China is looking for domestic sources of important natural resources including fossil fuels, lithium, cobalt and rare earth metals and in the process it has discovered new reserves of oil. China launched The Mineral Exploration Breakthrough Strategy in 2011 to discover these natural resources, the aim of which was to strengthen the country’s energy security.