Abstract:

The Asia-Pacific region is an important oil and gas producing region and the largest oil and gas consumer market in the world. Of the 155 major sedimentary basins in this region, more than 90 have oil and gas fields (~6900 in total) or oil and gas occurrences. The region can be further divided into four subregions—East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia-New Zealand and South Asia—according to geographical locations and structural characteristics, and there are about 131 major petroleum systems. This paper presents an overall analysis and summary of the oil and gas accumulation conditions (source rocks, reservoirs, caprocks, petroleum systems, etc.) in each subregions. On this basis, taking the play as the basic evaluation unit, the oil and gas resource potential of each basin is evaluated. The total recoverable conventional oil and gas resources in the Asia-Pacific region is 673.7×10⁸ t of oil equivalent, or 6.1% of the world reserves. Unconventional oil and gas resources are mainly heavy oil, shale oil, oil shale, shale gas and coalbed methane. The total technological recoverable unconventional oil and gas resources is 390.4×10⁸ t of oil equivalent, or 6.1% of the world reserves. According to the estimates of undiscovered resources and resources exploration level, offshore and deep-sea exploration will be the focus of the future: New strata and lithologic and stratigraphic traps in deep-sea and mature basins are the main exploration domains; marine deltas are an important prospecting target for natural gas fields; Cenozoic lacustrine facies of the back-arc basin group in Southeast Asia is a favorable exploration target for shale oil; and Devonian-Carboniferous cratonic basins in central Australia are the favorable shale gas exploration areas.

Key words: Asia-Pacific region, petroliferous basin, basin type, source rock, reservoir, caprock, resource potential