Despite a great progress has been achieved in overseas business in recent years

Chinese oil companies have been facing problems in recovering their exploration investments.The situation has been exacerbated by falling oil price started in mid 2014.It seems that the companies are in an urgent need of a risk-value assessment method for their overseas exploration projects so as to avoid investment losses and improve exploration deployment.There are many risks in the operation of the existing exploration projects

including internal risks

namely geological risk and exploration technology risk

and external risks

like political risk

security risk in host country of the resources

and contract risk from the project itself.The risk-value assessment method proposed here focuses on the resource potential of the exploration projects concerned

with consideration of both the internal and external risks.Four types of project characteristics combinations

including low risk-low value projects

low risk-high value projects

high risk-low value projects and high risk-high value projects

are also proposed before putting forward a strategy and suggestion for optimizing exploration business.The merits of the method have been verified through applications in controlling project risks

adding reserves

and implementing economic targets.It is also proven useful in optimization of exploration assets and business deployment.