SHENYANG, July 6 (Xinhua) -- Zhao Shijie, a 71-year-old painter from Panjin City in northeast China's Liaoning Province, has spent his life capturing the profound changes of this young but distinctive "oil city" on canvas.
His brush has moved from the bustling oilfields of decades past to the picturesque reeds and tidal flats of today's wetlands, chronicling the city's sustained push to balance ecological protection with the building of a world-class industrial base.
Founded more than 40 years ago, the city achieved the mechanical completion of a landmark China-Saudi Arabia joint venture in 2025, with a total investment of 83.7 billion yuan (about 12.3 billion U.S. dollars). Now preparing for operations, the project is expected to become a global hub for petrochemical and fine chemical industries.
At the same time, Panjin has stepped up efforts to protect its wetlands and other ecosystems amid ongoing oil development. It has built the world's first electric-heating molten-salt energy storage and steam-injection test station, resolving the longstanding issues of high energy consumption and heavy carbon emissions in conventional heavy-oil production.
According to the developers, the technology converts electricity into thermal energy stored in molten salt. Through continuous heat exchange between the molten salt and water, it generates high-temperature steam at 295 degrees Celsius, which is injected into oil wells to improve reservoir fluidity and facilitate extraction.
The technology, the developers noted, eliminates the need for natural gas combustion while also providing an effective solution to challenges such as production capacity volatility and continuous energy consumption.
Researchers are also exploring other technological pathways to tackle the deep-rooted challenge of high carbon emissions from heavy-oil extraction. Since conventional methods require energy to produce steam for viscosity reduction, they are investigating chemical agents or microorganisms as potential alternatives.
Using a specially formulated biological viscosity reducer, researchers have cut carbon dioxide emissions by 5,000 tonnes across production operations at 17 oil wells.
A harmonious scene unfolds on the outskirts of Panjin, where beam pumping units rise and fall slowly on the beaches, and oil pipelines meander through reed marshes that shelter red-crowned cranes and numerous other bird species -- a vivid testament to the harmonious coexistence between industry and nature.
Since 2012, Panjin has operated a breeding base for red-crowned cranes, where more than 500 of the birds have been successfully bred to date.
In the early 1990s, about 1,200 Saunders's Gulls, a rare bird species, were spotted in Panjin's wetlands. Today, their population has exceeded 10,000. The city's wetlands are now home to over 300 rare bird species.
In 2021, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment named Panjin a national demonstration zone for ecological civilization construction. The city was also designated an international wetland city in 2022. ■
