Past decade a great success for discovery of mineral resources

China has uncovered rich mineral resources in the past decade with a total of 10.1 billion metric tons of petroleum and 6.85 trillion cubic meters of natural gas being detected, the Ministry of Natural Resources announced on Thursday.

Since 2011, China has discovered 17 oil fields with proven reserves of at least 100 million tons each, including the Mahu field in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and the Qingcheng field in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

For natural gas, 21 major fields with reserves of more than 100 billion cu m each were confirmed, including the Anyue field in Sichuan province and the Sulige field in Inner Mongolia.

Geological surveys for shale gas also achieved remarkable progress in the past 10 years, the ministry said.

The Chuannan field, a large shale gas field in Sichuan province, and the Fuling field in Chongqing, can currently produce a combined 18.4 billion cu m of shale gas a year, it said.

Exploration of other minerals also witnessed significant progress, including graphite, which is widely used in the making of electronic products such as electrodes, batteries and solar panels.

During the past decade, more than 336 million tons of graphite have been detected, accounting for 65 percent of the reserves found since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

In Jiangxi province, two large tungsten deposits discovered in Zhuxi and Dahutang now rank as the world's two biggest tungsten mines, with proven reserves of 3.63 million tons and 840,000 tons respectively.

"The exploration of mineral resources, especially those with high potential to develop green power supplies, are crucial to China's future development, which will be more sustainable and environmentally friendly," said Yu Haifeng, head of the ministry's geological exploration department.

He said the ministry will continue to intensify support to improve geological surveys and make resolute steps to expand mineral exploration from the country's western regions to the east coast.

Technological improvement also played a crucial role in exploration.

A new plan for mineral exploration from this year to 2030 will be released soon by the State Council.

"We will further encourage technological innovations and conduct several major projects on precise surveys, mining waste recycling and high-efficiency extraction to boost mineral exploration in a green way," said Xu Jun, an inspector from the Ministry of Science and Technology.