Jianghan Oilfield lies in the center of the beautiful and rich Jianghan Plain, adjacent to the provincial capital Wuhan in east, Jingzhou and an important town Yichang in west, Yangtse River in south and Hanshui in north.

Jianghan oilfield is a key comprehensive oil base in the central-southern China. It is distributed mainly across seven cities (counties) in Hubei province, including Qianjiang and Jingsha, Shouguang cities and Guangrao county in Shandong province and Hengyang city in Hunan province.

Jianghan oilfield was put into oil and gas exploration in early 1960s, Construction and development in Jianghan oilfield began on the first day Aug., 1969. In early 1970s, the oilfield was put into production on a large scale, being as one of the earliest oil and gas fields under exploration and development. At present, Jianghan oilfield has become as an important production base for oil and gas production and bittern-chemical in the southern China. With its exploration and development over more than 30 years, totally 25 oilfields and one gas field had been discovered as of the end of 1997 with an accumulative proven OOIP of 1.08×108 in an oil-bearing area of 147.3 km2 and OGIP of 50.55×108 m3. Four oil and gas production bases have been established in Qianjiang, Enshi of Hubei province, Shouguang of Shandong province and Anzai of Shaanxi province. A 100×104 t oil production capacity had been built up in 1976. Since then, the annual oil production had been stablized at 100×104 t for 14 years till 1988. In recent years, Jianghan oilfield has been authorized with the royalty for resources exploration in an area of 8.9X104km2 in Hubei, Xinjiang, Ganshu, Ningxia, Shanxi, Sichuan, Guizhou and Congqing as the resource registration and management have been strengthened, laying a solid foundation for the realization of sustainable development of oil and gas enterprises.

Jianghan oilfield has a broad prospect. Especially, in order to intensifying the marine facies resource development in the southern China, the project for a strategic breakthrough in marine natural gas exploration in the western Hubei – eastern Sichuan has been included in the “Tenth Five Year Plan”, pursuing to increase additionally 4X1010m3 of proven gas reserves and 4X1010m3 of probable gas reserves. Meanwhile, with utilizing the historical opportunity potentially in western development and west to east piped natural gas transmission and implementing the strategy for resource expansion, the field is trying to have additional 4-6 X107t OOIP proven during the period of “Tenth Five Year Plan”. The oil and gas productions in Jianghan oilfield will increase to over 250 X104t in 2005.