Abstract:    Oil and gas exploration of deep-seated plays in sedimentary basins in China has gained a series of progresses, raising key petrogeological questions in related fields. Insights from these questions will deepen our understanding of deep basin geology and thus guide oil and gas exploration in China. In recent years, giant oil and gas fields are discovered in China in the exploration areas of marine carbonates, sandy-conglomerates, volcanic and metamorphic rocks, and shale gas. The exploration targets have reached 70008500 m in burial depth, with good prospects. However, as the deep-seated basins had experienced long period of tectonic evolution, large variations in temperature, pressure and tectonic stress field, different geological architecture and frameworks, and complex oil and gas pool-formation processes, its exploration has been challenging. The key geological questions are: formation and evolution of China‘s continents and its tectonopaleogeography; prototype basins and their evolution in the small-scale cratonic continental blocks in China; multi-stage modification and superimposed geological architecture of sedimentary basins in China; mechanism for and dynamic evolution of sedimentary basins; occurrence of deep-lying source rocks and mechanism for hydrocarbon generation and evolution; formation mechanism for and distribution of deep-seated reservoirs; pool-formation processes in deep basins; oil and gas accumulation and distribution under multi-stage superimposition and modification; mechanism for deep-seated shale gas occurrence; and process-oriented 4-D dynamic modeling of sedimentary basins. Today, basic research on the geology of deep-seated oil and gas is still lagging far behind practical requirements. Therefore, in-depth investigation of basin formation and evolution and geodynamics of oil and gas pool-formation, based on Chinas continental reality, is much needed. We also look forward to key advances in mobile tectonopaleogeography, 3-D structural restoration, fluid-rock interaction, and 4-D dynamic modeling.

Key words: geodynamics, deep strata, oil and gas pool-formation, petroleum exploration, petroliferous basin, China