Low-to-medium maturity lacustrine shale oil resources have enormous potential and are projected to play a crucial role in the massive scale-up of crude oil production in China in the near future. The in-situ conversion process is currently the only effective means of utilizing this resource. Nevertheless, significant scientific challenges and technological bottlenecks still exist. Under this circumstance, the National Natural Science Foundation of China approved an integrated project of the Enterprise Innovation and Development Joint Fund titled “The Mechanism of Low-to-medium Maturity Lacustrine Shale Oil Resource Formation and its in-situ Conversion and Exploitation”. This project aims to systematically investigate the entire process of in-situ conversion for low-to-medium maturity shale oil resources and lay a solid scientific and technological foundation for advancing the smooth implementation of on-site pilot trials. This paper presents the latest progress in this field and summarizes the existing scientific and technological challenges that need to be addressed. With the foundational support of the above project, our research team has made significant progress in several fields, including the formation mechanisms of organic matter super-rich shale, low-to-medium maturity shale oil enrichment area evaluation, heat and mass transfer dynamics, coupled fluid field and hydrocarbon expulsion efficiency, exploitation methods, among others. Despite these theoretical advances, several major challenges were identified, which help to further focus on the critical scientific issues, determine the in-situ conversion technique-developing direction, and formulate a feasible implementation plan for future resource utilization.

The presence of rock heterogeneity and fractures may cause abrupt spatial changes in capillary action and flow characteristics, which eventually change the precipitation behavior during CO₂ geological storage. Therefore, the salt precipitation mechanism of the heterogeneous structure needs to be studied. In this paper, the salt precipitation behavior in different heterogeneous structures was studied through pore-scale experiments at room temperature and atmospheric conditions. In the up-down heterogeneous structure, the salt precipitation has little effect on the injectivity regardless of the CO₂ injection rate. When the CO₂ injection rate is low, the salt tends to precipitate in situ in the small pore structure to form a crystal structure. When the CO₂ injection rate is high, the salt tends to precipitate in the large pore structure to form a cluster structure. In the left-right heterogeneous structure, regardless of the CO₂ injection rate, the precipitated salt is mainly in the cluster structure, and the salt is more dispersed in distribution, the impact on injectivity is small. The injection well can be selected in the formation with strong heterogeneity, to alleviate the blockage caused by salt precipitation. When CO₂ leaks in the fractures, salt tends to grow until the fracture is plugged, which is of great significance for the self-healing of the fracture for the caprock.