On April 29th, the Ministry of Natural Resources announced that significant achievements have been made in the new round of breakthrough strategic actions for mineral exploration. During the 14th Five Year Plan period, a total of nearly 450 billion yuan was invested to discover 225 large and medium-sized oil and gas fields in major basins such as Tarim, Ordos, and Bohai Bay, including 13 billion ton oil fields and 26 billion cubic meter gas fields. The annual production of crude oil in China has reached 216 million tons, setting a new historical high, and natural gas production has maintained an annual increase of over 10 billion cubic meters for nine consecutive years.

China's oil and gas exploration has achieved a "three-dimensional expansion" and made a historic breakthrough in advancing into the deep and oceanic regions of the Earth. In the field of deep earth exploration, the first 10000 meter exploration well - Deep Earth Taco 1 well successfully drilled through the 10000 meter formation and discovered oil and gas indications at this depth for the first time in the world. In the deep-sea field, the "Deep Sea One" ultra deep water atmospheric field has been fully put into operation, promoting China's deepwater oil and gas exploration and development capabilities to enter the forefront of the world. Currently, the total offshore oil and gas production has exceeded 90 million tons of oil equivalent.

The breakthrough in this round of mineral exploration has significantly enhanced China's domestic resource security capabilities. Unconventional resources such as shale oil and coalbed methane have also made significant progress, further consolidating the foundation of national energy security and providing solid support for the high-quality development of the Chinese economy.Editor/Yang Meiling