An oil field in Panjin, Northeast China's Liaoning Province Photo: VCG

Oil and gas discovered in the past decade reached 10.1 billion tons and 6.85 trillion cubic meters respectively, accounting for 25% and 45% of the total explored sum since 1949, revealed the Ministry of Natural Resources at a media conference Thursday on achievements of mine and oil and gas discoveries between 2011 and 2020.

The ministry detailed that exploration focus is moving toward the western areas of China and the ocean.

There are 17 oil fields discovered, each with hundreds of millions of tons, and 21 gas fields, each with hundreds of billions of cubic meters in the past 10 years.

33,600 tons of graphite was also discovered the past decade, accounting for 65% of the total amount found in China. Metal resource discovery also sees big breakthrough. Lead and zinc, molybdenum, tungsten added 137 million, 18.74 million and 6.12 million tons to the explored reserves respectively.    

Newly uncovered resources in 87 mines are equivalent to mines of a big and medium size. The predicted mining period of 755 productive mines got extended.  

One hundreds of millions of tons level oil field and four hundreds of billions of cubic meters level gas fields were discovered in the ocean areas. 32 non-oil and gas mineral resource bases have been set up nationwide, 25 of which are dispersed in the western part of China.

Global Times