Abstract: In recent years, a series of progress and breakthroughs have been made in the conventional and unconventional natural gas exploration in the Sichuan Basin, and the geological cognitions and resource potentials have been updated constantly. At present, it is in urgent need to assess the natural gas resources in the Sichuan Basin comprehensively, so as to figure out the natural gas resources and provide a basis for promoting the exploration and development of natural gas in this basin. In this paper, the exploration progress in the Sichuan Basin during the past decade was analyzed, the types of assessed resources were determined, and the assessment targets and methods were defined. According to the assessment, the conventional gas in place is 20.69×10¹²m³ (recoverable: 11.20×10¹²m³), including tight gas 5.87×10¹²m³ (recoverable: 2.35×10¹²m³), and shale gas 57.46×10¹²m³ (recoverable: 10.01×10¹²m³). Moreover, the distribution laws of natural gas resources were summarized, and the reasons for the differences between the current assessment results and the previous ones were illustrated. It is indicated that the natural gas resources in the Sichuan Basin are abundant with great potentials, with promising exploration and development. It is recommended to strengthen deep and ultra-deep explorations, to promote multi-formation stereoscopic exploration, and to speed up unconventional oil and gas exploration, so as to develop the natural gas resources rapidly and sustainably. In order to keep the rapid development of natural gas exploration, it is necessary to reinforce the studies on petroleum geological theories, exploration and development technologies, resource investigation and assessment, and management system reform.

Key words: Sichuan Basin, natural gas, tight gas, shale gas, resource assessment, resource potentials