The Current Status and Development Suggestions for Shale Oil Reservoir Stimulation at Home and Abroad 

North American marine shale oil has achieved large-scale commercial development by means of volumetric fracturing with tight spacing in horizontal wells with long horizontal sections and “factory-like” construction technologies, etc. However, the exploration and production of continental shale oil in China started late and are still generally in the stage of experiment and demonstration. To accelerate the exploration and production process of shale oil in China and improve relevant technologies, basic properties of North American marine shale oil reservoirs and China’s continental shale oil reservoirs, as well as the technical status and characteristics of reservoir stimulation applied on those reservoirs were summarized and analyzed, resulting in many new insights. Given the unique properties of continental shale oil reservoirs with medium-high maturity in China, suggestions that would result in better production results were made for such reservoirs in China. The suggestions focused on strengthening basic and mechanism research, addressing technical problems of cross layer fracturing in multi-lithology plastic reservoirs and complex fracture networks based fracturing, developing multi-functional fracturing fluid and pressure-sensitive intelligent proppant, studying drainage and CO₂ injection and production technology, and tackling key problems of fracturing-flooding-producing integration.