Abstract:

China is one of the earliest countries in discovering and using natural gas resource in the world.The great achievements made by both the ancient and modern Sichuan people in natural gas geology,and technology in drilling,exploitationand transportation,etc,rather collectively show an outline of the historical deve-lopment of the tremendous contributions of China.After studing a great deal of his-torical literatures from the Han Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty,and therecent reports of geological exploration,the author tries hard to study systema-tically this long historic process.Namely,the writer has firstly collected and analysed a lot of documents related to the first gas well—Linqiong gas well—in theworld;secondly,introduced the situation of the early use of the natural gas in Si-chuan;thirdly,expounded the exploration and exploitation courses of gas resourcesin Ziliujing saltfield from 16th to 19th century A.D.as well as the construc-tion process of this earliest natural gas production ase in the world;the fourth,emphasised discussion on the experience and working manner in locating wells,identifying lithology,making geological logging and tracing fractures of the pioners who had properly treated the geological task of natural gas;and finally,the author gives a brief review of the three stages in the development of drilling techno logy and the characters of the technology about exploitation and transportation.