Prognostication of oil and gas potential serves as one of the bases in formulating an energy policy

planning the economic construction of a country

and drawing up a plan for exploration.In this paper

the relationship of interaction and alternating development between prognostication and exploration is analysed.The necessity of developing a prognostic system of oil and gas potential is elucidated in the light of the characteristics

the methods

and the reliability of the prognostication.As an overall object

the research on the prognostication of oil and gas potential is essentially a synthetical course of the knowledges of multiple disciplines

in which the synthestic methodology of interdisciplinary nature derived from"system theory"

"information theory"and "cybernetics"et al.should be used

so that it can be characterised by"dynamical"and"trial and error"analysis.Based on system engineering

a three-dimensional structure of object-information-method and its dynamical scheme are proposed

together with a systematic developing approach and the optimization of the system using a changeable matrix.The purpose of this article is to seek for an optimal way to prognosticate oil and gas potential throughout China.