Abstract: In recent years, a large number of special natural gas resources including low-permeability gas reservoirs have vigorously emerged in China with increasing investments. They are expected to dominate the future development of petroleum industry. In China, however, economic evaluations for both low-permeability gas projects and conventional gas projects are conducted with the same methods and parameters. Such indiscrimination may significantly compromise the accuracy of economic evaluation for low-permeability gas projects, and eventually affect the healthy development of such projects. Under this background, geological features and changes of unit operating costs for the low-permeability gas project X in the Sichuan Basin and the conventional gas project S in the Ordos Basin were reviewed to analyse the problems in financial evaluation indicators for the economic evaluation methods currently deployed for low-permeability gas projects in China, and the inadaptability of national economic evaluation methods. Furthermore, certain improvements and reforms were proposed, aiming to make the economic evaluation for low-permeability gas projects in China more rational.

Key words: low-permeability gas reservoir, economic evaluation method, economic evaluation parameters, Sichuan Basin, Ordos Basin