The energy that powers household cooking, vehicle fuel, and winter heating all traces back to the oil and gas industry. In a significant move, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration have jointly released the "15th Five-Year Plan for Petroleum and Natural Gas Development," charting the course for the sector over the next five years.
Facing mounting uncertainties in the international oil and gas supply chain—stemming from geopolitical tensions, trade disputes, and transport route vulnerabilities—reliance on imports carries considerable risk. The plan's core mission is twofold: first, to safeguard the bottom line of energy security, ensuring ample domestic supply of oil and gas; second, to steadily advance the green transition, making extraction and production processes more low-carbon and environmentally sustainable.
By 2030, the goal is to establish a modern, self-sufficient, and green oil and gas industry system. This will be achieved through five key areas of improvement: boosting supply capacity, enhancing international cooperation, accelerating low-carbon transformation, strengthening technological innovation, and increasing market vitality.
Hard Targets for 2030: A Closer Look at the Numbers
The plan outlines specific, measurable goals for the next half-decade, providing a clear benchmark for progress. A key target is achieving a domestic oil and gas supply volume of 440 million tonnes of oil equivalent by 2030, ensuring a greater share of our consumption comes from domestic production.
Infrastructure development is also a priority, with plans to add 20,000 kilometers of new long-distance oil and gas pipelines during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. This will expand the national pipeline network to 220,000 kilometers by 2030, creating a more integrated and efficient national grid and enabling more cities, industrial parks, and households to access piped natural gas.
Another critical objective is to increase natural gas storage capacity to exceed 13% of national consumption by 2030. This is essential because natural gas usage fluctuates seasonally—winter heating demand is several times higher than in summer. Strategic reserves act as a buffer, storing gas in summer and releasing it in winter to ensure heating remains reliable even during cold snaps.
The plan also sets a pioneering target of injecting 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually through CCS/CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage) by 2030. This involves capturing CO2 from industrial emissions and injecting it into geological formations for permanent storage, a crucial step for emissions reduction. Notably, this is the first time such carbon capture, utilization, and storage targets have been incorporated into a Five-Year Plan.
Other Key Takeaways
Beyond the headline numbers, the plan outlines further measures to refine the oil and gas market system. This includes encouraging more players in upstream exploration and development, ensuring fair and open access to midstream infrastructure, and fostering regulated competition in the downstream market. Private capital will also be permitted to participate in the construction of non-strategic pipelines and oil and gas storage facilities.
Embracing digitalization, the plan calls for integrating artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things into operations to build "smart oil and gas fields" and "smart pipeline networks." The vision is for future pipelines to have self-inspection and self-alerting capabilities. Additionally, the plan encourages a transformation for mature oil and gas fields, leveraging their existing infrastructure to develop solar, wind, and geothermal energy. This aims to evolve these sites into "electricity fields, heat fields, storage fields, and carbon fields," fostering new business models and diversifying their role in the energy landscape.