[3] The principle Chinese reserves with commercial importance lie in Fushun (Liaoning), Maoming (Guangdong), Huadian and Nong'an (Jilin), and Longkou (Shandong).
Coal and oil shale are in a small outlier of Mesozoic and Tertiary sedimentary and volcanic rocks underlain by Precambrian granitic gneiss.
The oil shale contains 72.1% ash, 10.8% moisture, 1.2% sulfur, with a heating value of 1,745 kcal/kg (dry basis).
[9] Professor Alan R. Carroll of University of Wisconsin–Madison estimates that Upper Permian lacustrine oil shale deposits of the Junggar-Turpan-Hami basins in northwest China, absent from previous global oil shale assessments, are comparable to the Green River Formation.
[2] The extraction of oil shale in China began in 1926 under the Japanese rule.
[9] The commercial-scale production of shale oil began in 1930 in Fushun, Manchuria, with the construction of the "Refinery No.
[1][3] The major oil shale industry in China is the Fushun Mining Group.
These plants located in Fushun, Huadian, Wangqing, Beipiao, Longkou, Yaojie, and Dongning.
[8] The company operates the largest oil shale retorting plant in the world.
[5] Maoming oil shale industry was developed from the 1960s to the 1990s by Maoming Petrochemical Company, a subsidiary of Sinopec, which built 64 Fushun-type retorts and 48 gas combustion retorts for producing shale oil.
The Guandong Province authorities have a plan to use the Maoming oil shale for the power production using fluidized bed combustion.
Guangdong Electricity Company has plans to build a power station with capacity of 1,200 MW.
[3] In 1996, Jilin Energy & Communication Corporation, a subsidiary of the China Power Investment Corporation, put into operation the first oil-shale-fired power plant in China, consisting of three circulating fluidized-bed units with capacity of 12 megawatts (MW).
In 2005, the company in cooperation with the Jilin Municipal Government put forward the Huadian oil shale comprehensive utilization project.
The plant is equipped with 40 Fushun-type retorts, and it produces about 50,000 tonnes of shale oil per year.
In 2009, the company also commissioned an oil shale power plant which is equipped with two circulating fluidized bed.
[5] Longhua Harbin Coal Chemical Industry Company, a subsidiary of China National Coal Corporation, is preparing to build a shale oil plant with the capacity of 1,000 tonnes of shale oil per day in Yilan, Heilongjiang.
The plant will use hot recycled solids technology combined with fluidized bed retort.
[3] In addition, five private companies produce about 30,000 tonnes of shale oil by utilizing the Fushun-type retorts in Jilin.
[5][20] Other potential industries could be start in Uromqi (Xinjiang), Yongden (Gansu), and Chanpo (Hainan).