Drilling commences for geothermal heating project in Tongzhou, China

Beijing skyline, from Jingshan Park (source: flickr/ Caitriana Nicholson, creative commons)

The start of drilling of well CNPC Re-1 is the town of Lucheng in Tongzhou District, Beijing, China, marks the official launch of the first mid-depth geothermal heating pilot demonstration project of PetroChina Co. Ltd. (PetroChina). This is aimed to be coupled with a municipal heat network that can deliver geothermal heat to an area of 353,000 square meters and reduce CO2 emissions by 7650 tons per year.

A landmark project of the strategic cooperation between PetroChina and the Beijing municipal government, the project will adopt the strategies of heat extraction without water consumption and reservoir recharge. This will minimize the project effect’s on the ground water and make the project more sustainable.

Huabei Oilfield is the project implementation unit in charge of drilling. In terms of ground engineering, the project will adopt the design scheme of laying out the wellhead energy station and heating pipe network underground. This will be the first of its kind and will help improve the city aesthetics upon implementation.

Geothermal heating and cooling will be complemented by other renewable energy sources such as wind and hydrogen energy. In the future, this will help build a new energy demonstration base in Beijing and promote the transformation of PetroChina into a more comprehensive energy company.

PetroChina is currently working on four geothermal heating and cooling projects in Daxing, Tongzhou, Changping, and other places in Beijing. The mid-depth geothermal pilot project in Tongzhou is listed as a key project of Beijing for 2023. In 2022, PetroChina announced being awarded permits for 11.2 million square meters of geothermal projects.

Source: CNPC