CNPC oil and gas resource potential and exploration target selection

Abstract

Exploration and development of oil and gas is becoming increasingly difficult, and exploration targets and resource occurrence conditions are becoming more complex. Therefore, it is urgent to clarify the current situation and challenges of oil and gas exploration to evaluate the potential of domestic conventional and unconventional oil and gas resources, to illuminate the distribution characteristics of the remaining oil and gas resources, to evaluate and implement key exploration areas and favorable exploration zones, and to consolidate domestic oil and gas resources. In face of the new situation and new requirements, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has proposed five measures to strongly support oil and gas exploration. They have made 10 strategic discoveries and 10 major breakthroughs, and explored 15 large-scale reserves distributed in the central and western regions in China. Furthermore, proven reserves of oil and gas continued to grow at a high level. In this study, we summarized the oil-and-gas exploration situation, challenges and important measures of CNPC in the past ten years, and analyzed the potential and distribution of CNPC remaining oil and gas resources. The key areas and directions for oil-and-gas explorations of CNPC were discussed. It is indicated that the four areas of deep marine carbonate, lithologic strata, the lower reservoir-forming combination in the foreland thrust belt and shale oil are still the key points for breakthrough discoveries of future oil and gas exploration and large-scale reserves growth.

Keywords

• oil and gas resource
• exploration situation
• remaining resource potential
• exploration target
• cnpc