Abstract:

Some major issues of China's oil industry,such as China's petroleum resource potential,medium-long term oil demand and present petroleum exploration stage, have been discussed by various methods. Their results indicate that the discovery maturity (percentage of ultimately proven reserve with respect to total resources) of China's petroleum resources is very low, oil exploration remains in peak discovery stage but gas exploration is still in early discovery stage. The forecast result of oil and gas demand will be made with a large error if it is conducted only using a single factor at a certain period, such as consumption index and GDP growth correlation coefficient. By the end of 2020, the newly-added proven reserves in place in China would reach 160-200 million tons for oil and 8-10 billion m³ for natural gas respectively; the percentage of import oil in China's total consumption should not exceed 40%. It is estimated that the China's recoverable oil resource is 260 million tons or more. In China, the main contradiction of petroleum resource demand is reflected in a great resource potential and slow resource discovery rate. The top priority task at present is accelerating petroleum discovery rate, cutting down the energy consumption, and adjusting the energy source composition. Therefore, the government should issue the relevant policies and lows of encouraging petroleum discovery and adjusting energy consumption; the oil company should continue increasing the exploration activities in frontier areas, improving the discovery rate and exploration maturity of petroleum resources, and raising the percentage of domestic oil and gas productions in total consumption, in order to reduce the pressure brought by the high percentage of import oil and to ensure the safety of national petroleum strategy.

Key words: petroleum resources, recoverable resources, oil and gas exploration, oil demand, China