Engineering Philosophy-based Reflections on Efficient Development of Shale Gas in China

The Shale Gas Revolution began to have a significant impact on global supply and demand of natural gas; also the price trend of natural gas has been greatly affected. This phenomenon raised concerns among natural gas producers and consumers. China has abundant shale gas resources, but the development scale is small while facing problems including weak exploration and evaluation basis, overlapping royalties, complex terrestrial environment, lack of technical practices and accumulation, inadequate management and regulatory mechanisms, etc. To overcome these challenges for large-scale shale gas development, we believe that shale gas development is not only a single technical problem, but a systematic engineering demanding multidisciplinary research that will be bound to spread to humans, nature, and society. Therefore, to ensure the healthy development of China's shale gas, it is required to coordinate global and local relationships, engineering and community relations, as well as to break up the conflicts between engineering and nature, engineering and economy, along with engineering and society.