Shale gas found

SINOPEC, China’s largest oil refiner, has found over 105 billion cubic meters of shale gas in Central China’s Hubei Province.

The Sinopec Jianghan Oilfield on Tuesday said that the exploratory well it established in the Lichuan-Hongxing region of the Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture has been in trial operation for 20 days, with its daily shale gas output volume remaining stable.

Shale gas is mainly methane. It is considered a clean and new energy resource.Sources at the oilfield said it is difficult to explore and develop the shale in the area due to its great burial depth and complex crustal stress. The well is the second to have a stable output.

Charitable trust

CHINA’S charitable trust industry saw a rapid increase last year as its property size grew by 32.48 percent from a year earlier, said an industrial report Tuesday.

A total of 227 charitable trusts were set up last year, with the scale of property reaching 571 million yuan (US$90 million), said the report, jointly released by the China Charity Alliance and the China Trustee Association. As of the end of last year, the country’s registered charitable trusts numbered 773, managing 3.94 billion yuan in total, it said.

The country’s charitable trust industry reported a growth in the number of trustees, said the report.

GDP grows

THE gross domestic product (GDP) of Northwest China’s Gansu Province in 2021 surpassed 1 trillion yuan (US$157 billion) for the first time, up 6.9 percent year on year when calculated at constant prices, local authorities said Tuesday.

In 2021, the per capita disposable income of Gansu residents was 22,066 yuan, an increase of 8.5 percent over the previous year. The per capita disposable income for the province’s rural residents grew 10.5 percent year on year, narrowing the gap between rural and urban resident incomes.