Zhou Wen | "Come on" and "Strive for Excellence" for 40 Years

Since 1979, Zhou Wen, a professor born in the 1960s who grew up with the reform and opening up of the People's Republic of China, has been conscientiously engaged in scientific research, working hard for the country for more than 40 years, and dedicating most of his time to China's oil and gas exploration and development.

In 1998, Zhou Wen took the lead in publishing a systematic book on fractured reservoirs - Evaluation Methods of Fractured Oil and Gas Reservoirs, which combined mechanics and geology to conduct a comprehensive analysis of this industry-recognized difficult field, presenting it to the world in a clearer light for the first time.

▲Zhou Wen

In 2000, Zhou Wen took the lead in publishing a book on the evaluation methods of cap rock sealing and fault zone sealing - "Evaluation of the Sealing Effect of Cap Rocks and Fault Zones", which systematically established the systematic theory and technology for evaluating the sealing properties of cap rocks and faults, which are the weakest studied in the formation of oil and gas reservoirs, and provided theoretical and technical support for the research on oil and gas accumulation mechanism, fluid distribution and flow in oil and gas reservoir development, water injection and gas injection strings and other issues.

In 2007, Zhou Wen took the lead in publishing a book on the evaluation methods of the current geostress field of oil and gas reservoirs - "Evaluation Methods and Applications of Current Geostress Field of Oil and Gas Reservoirs", which solved the thorny problem of the long-standing lack of theoretical and technical methods for evaluating geostress in oil and gas reservoirs to guide actual oil and gas reservoir exploration and development in the petroleum industry.

Since the mid-1990s, Zhou Wen has established his own complex oil and gas reservoir geology and accumulation geology research team, and has long been committed to the research of tight sandstone and carbonate reservoir geology and accumulation in major basins in western China and important regions such as the Middle East and Central Asia. He has overcome one problem after another and has become a well-known expert in the fields of tight reservoir geology, complex oil and gas accumulation, and carbonate oil and gas logging geology. In particular, since 2004, his research results have provided technical support in reservoir geology for the oil and gas development of multiple contract blocks in the Middle East of China National Petroleum Corporation.

In the early 21st century, facing the impact of the "American Shale Gas Revolution", the team led by Zhou Wen became the first team in China to start shale gas geological research (2006) and the first team to focus on the reservoir properties of shale layers (2011). It led the shale gas reservoir geological research and cleared the theoretical and technical barriers for China's shale gas development.

Today, Zhou Wen's team's scientific research footprints are spread across the Sichuan Basin, Ordos Basin, Tarim Basin, Songliao Basin, Junggar Basin, Qaidam Basin, Bohai Bay Basin, East China Sea Basin, Yinggehai Basin, and overseas Iraq, Oman, Kazakhstan and other regions. He and his team continue to contribute to the national and even global oil and gas strategic security.

Buried in books, with oil and gas fields in mind

Zhou Wen was born in Anshun, Guizhou in 1962. In Zhou Wen's memory, his parents often encouraged his brothers and sisters to study hard so that they could enter higher education institutions in the future. After graduating from Panxian No. 1 High School in 1979, Zhou Wen lived up to his parents' expectations and was fortunately admitted to the former Chengdu Institute of Geology (now Chengdu University of Technology) to study petroleum geology.

In fact, Zhou Wen's ideal was to devote himself to the country's aircraft manufacturing industry. However, due to a twist of fate, he eventually went against "going up to the sky" and started a journey "down to the earth". Decades later, he ended up in the same place. With his patriotic enthusiasm and scientific research wisdom, he repeatedly helped the country solve its problems, which also made him firmly believe that "personal interests and hobbies can be cultivated." Nowadays, whenever he teaches students, he tells this story to encourage them to keep making progress.

After graduating from the former Chengdu Institute of Geology in 1983, Zhou Wen stayed at the school as an assistant teacher, participating in the after-class Q&A and homework correction of many courses. He recalled: "At that time, the professors taught professional courses during the day, and I gave students Q&A classes at night. The students were very enthusiastic about learning, and there were many people asking questions during the evening self-study. The students' thinking was divergent. In addition to the knowledge taught in class, they asked all kinds of questions, which often made me sweat. Some questions really could not be answered, so I had to apologize and tell them that I would go back to check the information and answer them next time." In this way, the school library became Zhou Wen's permanent residence. In the repeated questions and answers, spring and autumn came and went, and new and old faces intertwined. In the past few years, Zhou Wen has conducted extensive explorations on various issues in the professional field, and also laid a solid foundation of knowledge in mathematics, physics, chemistry and other fields for his subsequent development.

Around 1986, Zhou Wen began to study tight oil and gas reservoirs with the older generation of reservoir geologists such as Professor Wang Yuncheng. This was his first scientific research direction. In order to do a good job in research, he continued to bury himself in books and study, from computer languages, software programming, etc. to material mechanics, rock mechanics... one by one, he made up for his knowledge shortcomings, consolidated the theoretical foundation, and gradually produced results. In 1992, he was promoted to associate professor at the age of less than 30. After launching a monograph on the evaluation of systematic fractured tight oil and gas reservoirs in 1998, he was given the nickname "Zhou Crack" by the industry.

▲In August 2023, Zhou Wen gave a special report at the 7th Unconventional Oil and Gas Geology Symposium in Beijing

Around 1992, the current geostress field of oil and gas reservoirs gradually became a research hotspot in the international petroleum industry. Zhou Wen was sensitive to this trend and led 2 to 3 people to start research in this field. After more than ten years, he took the lead in publishing a monograph on the evaluation method of the current geostress field of oil and gas reservoirs in 2007, which caused a significant impact at home and abroad. Zhou Wen thus became one of the founders of the current geostress field of oil and gas reservoirs in my country.

Whenever he looks back at the first ten years of his teaching and research, Zhou Wen sincerely sighs: "Thanks to those years of hard study and accumulation, I laid a solid theoretical foundation for my future scientific research career." He said that it was the most fulfilling time in his life when he studied diligently, grew rapidly, and grew rapidly.

With the accumulation of experience, the team led by Zhou Wen gradually formed a unique research direction: first, the application of fracture evaluation technology in the development of tight oil and gas reservoirs; second, the evaluation theory and application of the current geostress field of oil and gas reservoirs; third, the formation, distribution and evaluation technology of shale gas reservoirs. Relying on these three major research directions and achievements, Zhou Wen and his team have formed a distinctive scientific research system that runs through oil and gas exploration and development, including oil and gas reservoir geology, unconventional oil and gas geology, oil and gas development geology, and engineering geology integration, and their scientific research path has been steady and long-term.

Drilling fractures to evaluate oil and gas resources

Tight oil and gas resources play an important role in the country's future energy strategy. Since China's tight oil and gas reservoirs are of various types and have undergone multiple periods of tectonic activities, fractures are relatively developed, resulting in strong heterogeneity of oil and gas reservoirs and great difficulty in exploration and development. The fine evaluation of fractures has become a global problem that restricts the effective exploration and development of tight oil and gas reservoirs. Since the 1980s, Zhou Wen has been committed to the study of fractured reservoirs and has never stopped learning and accumulating knowledge in this field.

In the 1990s, Zhou Wen, who was initially an associate professor, devoted himself to research. In 1998, amid the eager anticipation of the industry, a systematic book on fractured reservoirs, "Evaluation Methods for Fractured Oil and Gas Reservoirs", was born. This monograph integrates the essence of geology, rock mechanics and other disciplines, and has achieved important innovations in the theory and technology of fracture geological genesis type classification, fracture formation period, fracture identification, comprehensive evaluation prediction, fracture modeling, etc., forming a set of unique fracture distribution evaluation theories and technologies. At present, this achievement has been successfully applied to the development of nearly 20 fractured gas reservoirs in the Ordos Basin, Sichuan Basin, Tarim Basin, Songliao Basin, etc.

So far, in the field of tight reservoir evaluation, Zhou Wen's team has published 4 monographs and 235 papers, including 79 papers included in the Science Citation Index (SCI) and 50 papers included in the Engineering Index (EI). The team has authorized 19 domestic invention patents and registered 4 software copyrights. The relevant innovative achievements have received high attention and reports from international academic institutions such as the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) and the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).

Exploring geostress and filling gaps

In 1993, Zhou Wen began to study the geostress of oil and gas reservoirs. After 2000, with the rapid development of foreign countries in the field of geostress in oil and gas reservoirs, the country increased its special investment in this area. Zhou Wen also became busy. He led the team to undertake national "15th Five-Year Plan" key projects, national major science and technology special projects, National Natural Science Foundation and other projects. Over the past ten years, the team has carried out geostress research and evaluation work in the Sichuan Basin, Ordos Basin, and Zhalazor area in Kazakhstan. After more than ten years of hard work, in 2007 Zhou Wen took the lead in publishing a book on the evaluation methods of the current geostress field of oil and gas reservoirs - "Evaluation Methods and Applications of Current Geostress Fields in Oil and Gas Reservoirs".

Due to the great depth of oil and gas wells, the lack of methods and equipment for directly measuring geostress has brought difficulties to the evaluation of oil and gas geostress. The industry urgently needs to establish a set of geostress evaluation theories and technical methods suitable for oil and gas reservoirs. Zhou Wen and his team's research results over the years - the current geostress field evaluation theory, technology and application of oil and gas reservoirs, are filling this gap. This achievement has been applied in the drilling and fracturing of more than 20 tight gas reservoirs and shale wells in the Sichuan Basin, Ordos Basin, Tarim Basin, etc., with good results. At present, in this field, the team has published 2 monographs and more than 100 papers, of which 24 are included in the Science Citation Index (SCI) and 17 are included in the Engineering Index (EI); nearly 5 invention patents and 3 software copyrights have been obtained. Based on the above achievements, in 2016, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists interviewed and reported on Zhou Wen's team, which is a clear proof that Zhou Wen's team has won wide influence in this field.

Continue to tackle key problems and develop shale gas

After 2004, Zhou Wen participated in the evaluation of oil and gas resources in 20 basins in the Qinghai-Tibet region as the actual person in charge, helping the country to understand the resource situation in the Qinghai-Tibet region for the first time, including unconventional oil sands, shale oil and other resources. At that time, the United States had already set off a shale gas development boom. Zhou Wen led the team to take the lead in launching domestic shale gas geological research in 2006. In 2011, the team was approved for a national special project and became one of the earliest research teams in China to focus on the reservoir properties of shale layers.

Over the past decade, with the support of 45 projects including the National "863" Program, the Natural Science Foundation, and the "12th Five-Year Plan" and "13th Five-Year Plan" key scientific and technological research projects, Zhou Wen led the team to continuously carry out applied basic theoretical research and key technology research, focusing on the formation mechanism of reservoirs, distribution and enrichment laws, and continuous research on evaluation technologies, and formed a series of achievements in the formation, distribution and evaluation technologies of marine shale gas reservoirs. During this period, the team published 201 papers, of which 109 were included in the Science Citation Index and 17 were included in the Engineering Index; 40 intellectual property rights were approved, including 30 invention patents, 4 new utility patents, and 6 software copyrights. Since 2015, related achievements have been applied in national shale gas demonstration areas such as Changning and Weiyuan in Sichuan, providing technical support for shale gas area selection, well site deployment, reserve calculation, and development plan formulation.

Moreover, the team members fully participated in the shale oil and gas geological evaluation work in national shale gas demonstration areas such as Fuling and Zhaotong. Three professors have served as shale gas resource subsidy supervision experts of the National Energy Administration, members of the Unconventional Oil and Gas Geology Committee of the Geological Society of China, and members of the Sichuan Shale Gas Expert Committee. They have carried out Sichuan shale gas production verification and national subsidy work for five consecutive years, participated in the handling of the major safety incident of "natural gas emission from the ground of Fuling shale gas field", and made contributions to the development of shale gas industry in the country, Sichuan Province and other places.

Teaching and educating, striving to support

After 2000, Zhou Wen led his team to travel to oil-rich countries such as Kazakhstan, Oman, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia to provide technical support for Chinese oil and gas companies' overseas oil exploration and development.

Since he started studying at the university in 1983, Zhou Wen has taught nearly 15 courses, ranging from undergraduate basic courses such as "Principles and Applications of Well Logging", "Underground Geology of Oil and Gas Fields", "Mathematical Geology of Oil and Gas Fields", and even "Computer C Language", to graduate courses such as "Evaluation of Fractured Reservoirs" and "Advanced Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology". Zhou Wen has learned by analogy and polished them carefully.

Zhou Wen has long served as the secretary and dean of the School of Energy at Chengdu University of Technology and the executive deputy director of the State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Development Engineering (Chengdu University of Technology). Therefore, in addition to being a good teacher who imparts knowledge and answers questions, he pays special attention to the application of educational psychology. He thinks and explores students as if they were subjects, and strives to give students good guidance and education.

Zhou Wen has a lot to say about his 40 years of experience in education. Previously, when the Ministry of Education solicited opinions on higher education, he made three suggestions. "Foreign universities have writing courses, but after the division of liberal arts and science in my country, many science students have a weak literary foundation, so that they write papers with many typos and poor logic; scientific research requires a solid foundation in logic, and universities should offer logic courses; philosophy courses must be taken seriously to give students sufficient training in dialectical thinking."

Zhou Wen, who is already in his sixties, is still concerned about education. On the one hand, he gradually resigned from administrative positions to allow outstanding young people to take over; on the other hand, he concentrated on sorting out and summarizing scientific research results, hoping to spread excellent academic experience and provide support for the younger generation.