The natural shale gas reserves in China currently exceed 1 trillion cubic meters. Last year, newly discovered and proven oil fields fell to 877 million tonnes, compared to 1.552 billion tonnes in 2012. And for natural gas, new inventories of raw materials have fallen for the past five years from 961 billion cubic meters to 555.4 billion cubic meters.

The usable oil reserves in 2017 compared to the previous year were up by 1.2%, including natural gas by 1.6%, and shale gas by 62%. By the end of 2017, the shale gas inventories were 916.8 billion cubic meters and by April their volume had grown to over 1 trillion cubic meters.

For the past five years, China has invested over 480 billion CNY (71.9 billion USD) in search of natural resources.

Chinese national oil companies (NOC), CNPC, Sinopec and CNOOC, operate more than 90% of China’s producing oil fields. In recent years, natural declines, mature conventional reserves as well as capital spending cuts have directly impacted China’s oil production. The decline of oil production will be partly offset by the increase of natural gas production, due to the exploration and development of the unconventional resources.