ABSTRACT Chinese offshore basins produced more than 1.6 million bbl of oil equivalent per day in 2024. They represent one of the largest offshore oil and gas production bases in the world and are a significant contributor to provide energy to fuel China’s economic growth. This achievement has come from more than four decades of exploration and development efforts, led by China National Offshore Oil Company, in addition to Sinopec, China National Petroleum Corporation, and many international oil companies. There are seven Chinese offshore basins, including the Bohai Bay, South Yellow Sea, East China Sea, Pearl River Mouth, Qiongdongnan, Beibu Gulf, and Yinggehai. These offshore basins form a Cenozoic hydrocarbon complex, the evolution of which was driven by multiplate interactions. This study synthesizes decades of exploration achievements to elucidate genetic links and interactions between the Eurasian, Pacific, and Indo-Australian plates, leading to the development of continental rifts, back-arc and strike-slip basins. This tectonic framework controlled a strong spatial-temporal differentiation of petroleum systems. Eocene lacustrine shales form the primary oil-prone source rocks, whereas Oligocene-Miocene paralic strata are predominantly gas-prone. Consequently, hydrocarbon distribution is distinctly partitioned, with oil prevailing in the Bohai Bay Basin and shallow-water northern South China Sea, and natural gas dominating the East China Sea Basin, Yinggehai Basin, and deep-water of the northern South China Sea. Understanding the geological evolution history has been pivotal to the success of hydrocarbon discoveries and development in these Chinese offshore basins and can hopefully provide some lessons for oil and gas exploration and exploitation for other offshore basins around the world. (see the Graphical Abstract below) GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Zhu et al. (Fri,) studied this question.