A REDISCUSSION ON THE EXPLORATION PROSPECT OF COAL BED GAS IN CHINA

Encouraging achievements have been obtained from the exploration of coal bed gas in china. In many areas, an industrial breakthrough has been made in exploation and development tests, and large scale coal bed gas fields have been discovered. But there exists technical problems and different opinions to the exploration and development which mainly reflect the influence from the gelogic conditions of coal bed gas. From the geologic conditions which affect the exploration of coal bed gas, the author studied the mineability of coal bed gas resources and considered that the area whose coal bed gas resources can be developed by the drainage gas-collecting method is limited at the present. This is mainly controlled by the mineability of coal bed gas. The mineability of coal bed gas mainly depends on coal texture, formation pressure and hydrogeologic conditions. In this paper, three hydrogeologic types of coal bed gas and their distributive regions were suggested for the first time, different influence caused by different hydrogeologic types to the mineability of coal bed gas was analysed, and the prospect to the comprehensive exploration and development of coal bed gas was discussed. Also, the author gave some advises to the later exploration work of coal bed gas.