摘要
China has gained fruitful results in scientific and technical research of natural gas. Up to the present, the proven reserves of natural gas in China reached 438,168 million cubic meters or more. 32 big gasfields have been discovered, of which 7 gasfields with the reserves over 100 billion cubic meters each have been determined and 6 gas provinces have been set up initially; in addition, and important breakthrough has also been made in Songliao Basin. According to the statistics, the annual output of natural gas is 40.77 billion cubic meters and it will break 50 billion cubic meters at the end of this year, reflecting China is striding toward to the big producer of natural gas in the world. The annual gas output in China is expected to reach 85 billion cubic meters by 2010 and exceed 100 billion cubic meters before 2015. The important progresses have been made in both natural gas geologic and exploration theories, and meanwhile big breakthroughs have been achieved in many aspects, such as the hydrocarbon derived from coal beds （natural gas is predominant associated with oil）, geochemistry, geologic feature of gas reservoir and reservoiring theory, and the distribution regularities and exploration direction of large gasfields.
