Over the past three decades, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has stepped up the pace of “going global”, steadily implemented the independent exploration strategy, continually increased the efforts for exploration and kept a relatively high investment level. As a result, a series of significant breakthroughs and discoveries have been made in Africa,Central Asia, and Americas, which brought rapid reserve growth and laid solid foundation for the “100 million tons overseas equity production” goal. The successful experience of CNPC overseas oil and gas exploration including (1) adherence to acquisition of projects and consolidation of the development basis; (2) adherence to independent exploration and reduction of discovery cost; (3) study of risk areas and enhancement of process supervision; (4) adherence to the benefit-centering principle and guarantee of high-efficiency exploration; (5) optimization of asset portfolio and improvement of returns from investment; (6) creation of the“ four small and four big” model to make decisions scientifically (small operational sites based on large scale logistics; small investment aimed at big discoveries; small teams engaged in large-scale cooperation and small shareholders provided with big revenues). The comprehensive analysis shows that the future areas for China’s oil companies to carry out the “going global” strategy should be focused on the nation’s surrounding areas, the Africa-Middle East region and Americas. They should concentrate their efforts on the oil-enriched basins worldwide and frontier exploration areas, give preference to the areas along the Belt and Road Initiative route and close to the existing projects and continually step up efforts for expansion of global resources to make new contribution for the nation’s energy security.

Huge natural gas reserves was proven in China, but its long-term stable production faces a series of challenges owing to unknown technologies to dramatically improve the recovery factor of complicated gas reservoirs. The main mechanisms for CO2 flooding to improve the gas recovery (EGR) from gas reservoirs include gas reservoir energy supplement, substitution of dominant CO2 absorption, continuous convective displacement and gravity differentiation. Research on CCUS (carbon capture, utilization and storage) is of great importance to maximizing hydrocarbon gas recovery, using deep geological space for gas storage and reducing carbon emission on a large scale. Under the background of carbon neutrality, the CCUS-EGR technology has a broad prospect for application. After nearly 20 years of CCUS-EOR technology research, key engineering technologies, such as carbon capture, CO2 flooding injection and production, CO2 flooding fluid gathering and processing, and long-distance CO2 pipeline construction have matured, thus providing the necessary technical conditions for carrying out the full-process CCUS-EGR development experiments. At present, the key task of CCUS-EGR research is to verify the actual technical effect of CO2 flooding, identify the laws for CO2 flooding development of gas reservoirs, and establish an extensively-adapted CO2 flooding engineering method for gas reservoirs. To make a breakthrough in PetroChina’s CCUS-EGR technology, it is proposed to carry out major CCUS-EGR development experiments on a variety of gas reservoirs with good seal and storage conditions, such as gas reservoirs of special lithological characters, tight sandstone gas reservoirs, volcanic rock gas reservoirs, shale gas reservoirs and coal rock gas reservoirs, thus developing the theory and technology concerning aggressive improvement of gas recovery factor and carbon storage in gas reservoirs by CO2 flooding. Of those technologies, the experiments should be focused on testing the synergistic displacement effect of flue gas components and verifying the technology of expanding the CO2 sweeping volume, while the key theoretical research should be focused on establishing a perfect prediction method for CO2 emergence time and improving the calculation methods for the key production indicators like natural gas recovery factor and establishing the accounting methods for CCUS-EGR reduction of carbon emission.

Against the background of energy system transformation and transition, integrated energy service is an important way to realising the “dual carbon” goal and the construction of the new-type energy system. China’s integrated energy service industrial development faced a number of challenges, particularly the natural gas-centred integrated energy service business that has no achieved a replicable commercialized model. The development history of integrated energy service business at home and abroad are compared. Currently, the integrated energy service models at home and abroad are mainly focused on electricity, and the business model involving natural gas utilisation is relatively small. China’s integrated energy service development conditions from the perspectives of policy and operation are summarised. The three stages of China’s integrated energy service market formation and the four stages of the commercial model development are analysed. Based on the comprehensive energy application of various enterprises such as “electricity-focused” and “natural gas-focused”, the connotations of natural gas-centred integrated energy service business development model is put forward, and the basic energy-saving service, clean energy development and supply, integrated application of energy resource, and low-carbon value-added service are covered. The feasibility and economy of the integrated energy service model are also analysed and discussed using a regional data centre case.

The general goal of China’s oil and gas market reform has been establishment of a deregulated, vigorous and orderly competitive oil and gas market for the purpose to accelerate exploration and development of the domestic oil and gas resources since the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee. Currently, low-threshold opening of the oil and gas exploration and development market leads to some problems like“ occupying the market without investment,” though the policy encourages various capitals to be actively invested into the oil and gas exploration area. This article studies and compares the concrete measures adopted by Iraq, Brazil and other countries for qualification requirements, regulatory implementation and renewal management in the area of exploration and development. It also analyzes execution of China’s policies related to reform of the mineral rights in recent years and the current conditions of exploration and development qualification requirements. The current problems concerning management come mainly from inadequate emphasis on technological level and experience, lack of cautions in estimation of the financial conditions, imperfect supervision and renewal management, and a relatively undesirable ability to regulate the oil and gas mineral rights. Against the background of opening China’s mineral rights market, the countermeasures for enhancement of oil and gas market management should include perfection of qualification auditing requirements, strengthening efforts for dynamic supervision, establishment of the renewal management system for mineral rights and increase of information transparency.

As the global oil and gas industrial leaders, seven international oil majors have acquired exploration blocks and participated in the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activities in the benefit-oriented principle, which represents their industrial judgments on international geopolitics, industrial trends and hot areas. This article makes a systematic analysis of the characteristics and methods for acquisition of exploration blocks and transactions of assets made by seven international oil majors since the year of 2000. Generally speaking, there are four characteristics: (1) They continually acquired the large-area exploration blocks and consolidated the basis of resources for sustainable development. (2) They appropriately slowed down the pace of acquisitions at the time of high oil prices and increased their global shares to the acquisition areas at the time of low oil prices. (3) The M&A transactions were made against the oil prices. They acquired a few firms by annexations of companies at high cost at the time of low oil prices. They focused on acquisition of assets in a large quantity at low cost at the time of low oil prices. (4) They followed the oil price trends for sell their assets. They were reluctant to sell at the time of low oil prices, leading to a small quantity and a small scale of transfers. They sold assets in large quantities at the time of high oil prices, leading to a large quantity of transfer projects with a high unit price. China’s big-three oil companies acquired lots of exploration blocks before 2014, taking active part in M&A transactions. The blocks acquired by the Chinese companies dropped dramatically after 2015 with the M&A activities being basically at standstill. The basis for follow-up development was not solid enough. There are three enlightenments that can be offered to the Chinese oil companies in their effort to expand the upstream business. (1) Make good plans and continue efforts for acquisition of exploration blocks with determination. (2) Consolidate the foundation and increase stockpiles while continually improve business competence. (3) Screen in advance, diversify the sources and make lasting efforts for the target pool of new ventures.

Rotary steerable drilling has been put into large-scale application overseas. It has become the indispensable equipment for unconventional oil and gas drilling and promoted unconventional oil and gas revolution in the United States, changing the global energy situation. Currently, this technology is used to drill horizontal wells at home in a small proportion. Instead, sliding steerable drilling technology is still dominant in this area. Generally speaking, the production is increased comparatively slowly so far as development of unconventional oil and gas reservoirs is concerned, with a low single-well yield and a poor economic performance. The foreign rotary steerable technology system is under rapid development. The smart steerable technology leads to the “high-temperature, high build-up rate, multi-parameter and intelligent” new-generation products. This article compares and analyzes the progress and gaps in the Chinese and foreign unconventional oil and gas drilling and completion technology. It also proposes to enhance the basic research, such as smart rotary steerable drilling closed control and MWD data transmission,strengthen the studies of rotary steerable tools offset method, measurement control method and downhole power driving method, accelerate upgrading and extensive application of rotary steerable technology, and promote China’s unconventional oil and gas revolution.

Large-scale and high-efficiency development of coal-rock gas (CRG) is not only an important technological subject concerned in the unconventional natural gas area but also a challenging bottleneck for production business. Based on the deep coalbed methane production conditions both at home and abroad, this article makes a systematic analysis of the domestic CRG development demonstrative projects and draws three conclusions-high-efficiency development dominated by technological progress, management creation serving as the method and policy support acting as propelling power. From the three dimensions of geology, technology and economy, it also analyzes the main factors restricting high-efficiency CRG development, pointing out that the complicated geological conditions of CRG reservoirs lead to high development cost which is the bottleneck facing highefficiency development while the current production technology has certain limitations. Based on the five areas of technological progress, cost control, policy support, management improvement and joint venture and cooperation, the article comes up with 16 countermeasures for high-efficiency CRG development to promote sustainable CRG industrial development.

To bring a group of projects at complicated levels has been a bottleneck for project management. To solve the problems like research inefficiency of the science and technology projects, unsatisfactory scientific research basis and undesirable motivation of technological personnel, PetroChina Coalbed Methane Company Limited put forward five scientific and technological creation conceptions and established the management system for major science and technology projects that is centered on the project management office (PMO). Based on all of the creation management elements, the company has thoroughly carried out the scientific and technological management policies and related requirements released by the State, CNPC and itself and clarified the PMO’s duties and responsibilities, daily management procedures and structure of management system. It brought about dynamic and smart management of the project process by means of a series of measures, such as formulating the roadmap for project execution, establishing the standards for evaluation of the process, setting up the smart scientific and technological management platform, strengthening budget management and constructing the comprehensive IPR management system. The management system for major science and technology projects has fueled the company's scientific and technological creation with a number of key technological results achieved in various projects organized by the company. As a result, the company has remarkably raised its scale and performance and constructed the nation’s central creation platform for engineering research on CBM development and utilization, thus becoming a leader in the area of high-quality unconventional natural gas development.

To meet the demand for complicated oil and gas reservoirs, high-precision imaging and high-efficiency exploration, Bureau of Geophysical Prospecting (BGP) introduced the latest international project management process to cope with a series of challenges, such as rapid technological development of current seismic data processing business, various business demands and the difficulty to solve a magnitude of multi-dimension multi-source heterogeneous data. Based on application of the newgeneration seismic imaging technology, BGP highlighted life-cycle quality control and created a complete seismic data processing project life-cycle management system covering production, business, resources, and personnel. It also established the intelligent digital platform for integration of supervision, management and control to bring about life-cycle quality supervision, project management full cost control for seismic data processing projects. While improving the operational efficiency and management ability of project, BGP also kept continual high-quality development of processing business and effectively helped the domestic oilfields make breakthroughs in exploration of complicated oil and gas reservoirs, thus providing a favorable decision-making basis for the company’s future development.

Research and development of petroleum engineering products is a complicated systematic process. How to guarantee product quality and reliability is still one of the key problems to be solved for the industry at the present time. No standards concerning product maturity has been formulated in the domestic petroleum engineering industry. Sinopec Research Institute of Petroleum Engineering Co., Ltd. established the technological R&D quality management standards system and formulated the evaluation methods for grading the innovative petroleum engineering products. It also defined the grades of petroleum engineering products maturity in four categories and divided the product maturity into nine grades. In addition, it brought the innovative petroleum engineering products under maturity evaluation and application, testing the feasibility of the product maturity theories and evaluation methods. The purpose is to control the product-making and tangible process of scientific research achievements, optimize the R&D process and provide the mindset and reference for grading the maturity of petroleum industrial products

Seismic instrument is a key equipment for seismic exploration. The functions and precision of the equipment have influence on accuracy and reliability of exploration, thus leading to a relatively high technological threshold for design. This article analyzes the main products of land seismic instruments and the current situation of R&D and manufacturing resources and comes up with higher technological requirements on station power consumption of land node instrument, ability for seismic signal response and acquisition, management of instruments in large quantities quality control, and intelligent services. Generally speaking, the instruments are developing towards small scale, intelligence, digitalization, and automation of installation. To accelerate technological innovation of seismic instruments, the article comes up with some suggestions on technological development and R&D organization and management, such as clarification of technological gaps and enhancement of key technological research, organization of technologically-advantageous teams for settlement of bottlenecks including power consumption and technological functions, and strengthening top-level design to establish the synergetic mechanism for seismic instrument technological innovation and make technological research in collaboration with scientific research institutions. In addition, the R&D integration platform should be established on the basis of integrated R&D strength with clarification of R&D contents, production and manufacturing process and division of labor. Meanwhile, it is necessary to adhere to the principle for independent R&D at a high starting point, continually consolidate the advantageous technology, formulate the scientific and objective testing methods and evaluating standards and promote independent inspection to satisfy the demand of the geophysical projects for data quality control.

To make response to the nation's carbon peak and carbon neutrality strategy, the oilfields made active efforts for energy-consuming structural transformation. The source-grid-load-storage integration technology is based on integration and optimization of power source, power grid, load and energy storage and helpful to realization of energy-consuming structural transformation and fulfillment of the carbon peak and carbon neutrality objectives. Based on this technology, the oilfields like Tarim, Yumen and Tuha committed their efforts to development of green power, perfection of the power grid, optimization of load, and establishment of the relative energy-consuming facilities, thus gradually perfecting the source-grid-load-storage integration system. As a result, they have successfully accelerated the oilfield energy-consuming structural transformation and achieved good economic and environmental results. The key to China's oilfield energy-consuming structural transformation is to reasonably plan and allocate the source, grid, load and storage resources and bring about a healthy and harmonious development of source-grid-load-storage integration system. Therefore, it is proposed that the national and local governments and the oilfields should perfect the relative laws, regulations, standards and specifications, establish the market mechanism, coordinate and integrate the resources, and accelerate technological revolution. it is necessary to reduce the cost to invest and operate the sourcegrid- load-storage integration projects in order to establish and optimize the energy consumption system of source-grid-loadstorage integration and realize the country’s oilfield energy consuming structural transformation and modernization.