Published : 13/02/2026
News reports often mention that China is the world's largest petroleum importer, giving rise to issues like energy security. But what many people might not have realised is that China is, in fact, one of the world's top oil-producing nations and was once a crude oil exporter.
China's petroleum: Records date back more than 3,000 years
Although China was not the first country to discover and use petroleum, its "history of petroleum" is long. The I Ching (《易經》), written more than 3,000 years ago, already contains a record of "fire in the marsh water" ("澤中水火", referring to petroleum seeping out and burning on a lake's surface).
However, it was not yet called petroleum at that time. The term "petroleum" first appeared 1,000 years ago in the Dream Pool Essays (《夢溪筆談》) of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127 AD).
China's petroleum industry also has a history of over 150 years.
In 1877 (the third year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing Dynasty), an oil well in a place called "Chuhuangkeng" (出磺坑) in Miaoli(苗栗), Taiwan, imported American equipment and technical personnel for extraction. The well is claimed to be the world's second, and Asia's first, oil well with modernised extraction.
Entering the 20th century, in 1907 (the thirty-third year of the Guangxu reign), the Chinese mainland's first industrial oil well was drilled in Yanchang County (now part of Yan'an City) in northern Shaanxi, and thereafter, oil deposits were discovered and extracted in places such as Yumen (玉門) in Gansu.
However, China's overall petroleum production was still very limited at the time, and by 1949, its crude oil output was a meagre 120,000 tonnes, roughly the capacity of a modern medium-sized oil tanker. For this reason, China had always relied on imports for its needs.
Read more: Are "oil" and "crude oil" different? Does China measure in "barrels" or "tonnes"?
The discovery of the Daqing oil field was crucially important
In fact, Western scholars once considered China an "oil-poor country", and believed that even if there were extractable oil fields, they would only be "small-scale operations".
After the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the authorities went to great lengths to find petroleum resources. Thanks to the efforts of geologists and exploration personnel, new oil fields were successively discovered, and China finally shed its "oil-poor country" label.
Key milestones among them include the discovery of the Karamay oil field (克拉瑪依油田) in Xinjiang in 1955, the drilling of crude oil at the Daqing oil field (大慶油田) in Heilongjiang Province in 1959, and the construction of the Shengli oil field (勝利油田) in Shandong Province and the Dagang oil field (大港油田) in Tianjin in the 1960s.
The Daqing oil field was particularly important to China.
Because 1959 was the joyous 10th anniversary of the founding of PRC, the oil field was named "Daqing", and the barren land where it was located later developed into the present-day city of Daqing.
The city of Daqing now has a population of over two million, ranking 4th among the 12 prefecture-level cities in Heilongjiang Province.
Bulk export of crude oil from 1973
For a long time, the Daqing oil field was China's largest onshore oil field, and it helped China achieve self-sufficiency in petroleum in the 1960s.
From 1973 onwards, with the increased supply from the Daqing oil field and others, China even had the capacity to export crude oil in bulk to countries like Japan, in exchange for extremely valuable foreign currency at the time.
1978 was the starting point of China's Reform and Opening-up. In that year, China's crude oil production surpassed 100 million tonnes, joining the ranks of the world's major oil-producing countries.
By 2020, China's crude oil production exceeded 200 million tonnes, and it has roughly remained at that level since. Taking 2024 as an example, the officially announced crude oil production was 213 million tonnes.
What does over 200 million tonnes of crude oil represent?
It is enough to meet the needs of several medium-sized countries. This output is also sufficient to place China at the forefront of crude oil-producing nations. At the end of 2024, many rankings listed China as the 5th-largest crude oil producer.
However, one point to note is that China's crude oil production is far behind the top three countries on the list. The production of these three countries in 2024 was at a level of over 500 million to over 600 million tonnes.
Why has China become the largest importer of crude oil?
Which country ranks first? Is it the Middle Eastern "oil kingdom" of Saudi Arabia? That's no longer the case. According to 2024 data, Saudi Arabia only ranks 2nd, while the United States ranks first, and Russia third.
The United States led world oil production for a long time in the 20th century, until it was surpassed by countries like the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia in the 1970s.
But before the end of the 2010s, the country, relying on its shale oil resources and development technology, reclaimed the top spot.
After discussing China's crude oil production, another question arises: since China has maintained its status as a major oil-producing country for many years, why does it still need to import crude oil, and has become the world's largest importer?
In fact, this is not difficult to understand. China is both a major oil-producing country and a major oil-consuming country, and its consumption far exceeds its domestic production.
As for the situation of China's petroleum consumption and imports, for example, when it transitioned from being a petroleum exporting country to a net importing country, it will be discussed in another article.