China's petroleum exploration enterprises and geological survey organizations invested more in oil and gas exploration in 2022 to cope with complicated situations like global profound changes unseen in a century and shock in international energy markets. And a lot of new exploration discoveries and breakthroughs were found and made. For the high-quality and sustainable development of China's petroleum exploration in the coming future, situations about conventional and unconventional oil and gas resources in China were expounded, main features and fresh highlights in this exploration in 2022 were reviewed, and exploration prospects in 2023 were put forward in combination with resource potential. Results show that (i) China' petroleum exploration in 2022 exhibited obvious turnaround of both capital investment and petroleum production, new discoveries mainly founded around or in the deep part of proved reservoir-forming assemblies, outstanding findings of unconventional oil and gas exploration in mature fields, and guidance of advanced geological theories and technologies to make new exploration breakthroughs; (ii) significant exploration breakthroughs have been made in fault-controlled high-energy shoal at the Ordovician of Fuman oilfield in Tarim Basin, the Permian natural gas and deeper shale gas in southeastern Sichuan Basin, and shale oil in old oilfields of east China; and (iii) China's petroleum exploration in 2023 is expected to witness novel breakthroughs in the deep or the deep waters, periphery of large petroliferous basins, as well as marine shale oil/gas and shale gas with marine-continental transitional in north China.

As the growth in both demand of gas consumption and dependence on gas import in China, it is imperative to build the natural-gas reserve capacity enough for seasonal peak-shaving, which is an essential measure to secure the long-term, safe and stable natural-gas supply and promote the sustained and stable evolvement of China's economy. So, the necessity and feasibility of underground gas storage (UGS) constructed in offshore China were summed up and analyzed. Coupling with the current storage capacity, some offshore UGS schemes were proposed, and their construction and operation modes were discussed. Results show that (i) high-quality oil and gas reservoirs in offshore can make up shortfalls in the onshore UGS capacity. Sea conditions, project schemes, UGS construction/operation modes and other factors should be especially investigated. This construction is believed to be safe and reliable according to decades of offshore engineering technologies and management experiences in China; (ii) offshore UGSs and LNG terminals can be designed in collaboration by means of two schemes: offshore, and onshore & offshore. And offshore field development and UGS construction can be coordinated and integrated; (iii) UGS construction cost can be reduced by overall planning and stepped implementation. Through optimizing construction modes, the sort of UGSs build from large-scale gas reservoirs functions as a natural-gas running platform to interconnect with field production, LNG import and onshore pipeline gas, thus realizing a multi-source coordination for joint commissioning and delivery; and (iv) lifecycle dynamic management of production, injection, storage and withdrawal of gas reservoir UGS can drive the development of marginal fields nearby and also improve overall benefits in field development, UGS operation and natural-gas peak-shaving.

A better relation among enterprises, local government and community stakeholders is one of the key elements in the great development of natural gas, Sichuan Basin, so that the government and all sectors of the community can be mobilized to serve for increasing both reserves and production in an effort to build the production-capacity base hitting 1,000×10⁸m³ and clean-energy demonstration base as well as promote the regional economy. Taken PetroChina Southwest Oil & Gasfield Company as an example, the vital function, principle ways and obtained achievements of the enterprise-locality relation were analyzed for the great development of natural gas, some solutions of both collaboration were proposed with consideration of existing problems. Results show that (i) oil and gas exploration and development activities are exactly constrained to both subsurface and surface resources. As the exploration and development technological process, technical conditions do no longer serve as bottlenecks, and non-technical contradictions between enterprises and local entities are increasingly prominent and become one of the main factors governing this great development; (ii) enterprises and local entities should be work together to set a coordination and communication platform through deliberate planning and coordination across industrial chains, the central enterprises should build joint ventures with provincial, municipal or other local entities to initially form enterprise-locality co-sharing and co-construction mechanisms; and (iii) functions of various platforms in resource allocation and interest-sharing balance will be fully activated in order to realize mutual prosperity, and an active cooperation between petroleum enterprises and local entities will be enhanced so as to bring about favorable conditions.