Abstract: During the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan, oil prices have remained continuously low and the global investment environment has become increasingly complicated. This has raised major issues for CNPC overseas oil and gas exploration, including the issue of how to adapt to complex internal and external environments as quickly as possible and how to achieve accurate deployment and benefit exploration. The company has proposed a robust deployment strategy of focusing on benefits, seeking large-scale, high-quality, rapidly-recoverable reserves, and carrying out risk exploration and fine exploration. A series of effective exploration management measures have gradually been developed. These include: innovating and implementing an integrated research organization mode of “industry-college-institute-application cooperation”, optimizing decision-making processes at headquarters level, integrating exploration-development-engineering, strengthening international cooperation in deep-water exploration, and screening large basins globally to identify new exploration projects. Between 2016 and 2019, CNPC overseas oil and gas exploration made 12 major breakthroughs and strategic discoveries as a result of implementation of these measures. Discoveries have been made in several fields in mature exploration areas through fine exploration. Cumulative proven oil and gas geological reserves are more than 10×108 t oil equivalent, the discovery cost per barrel oil is less than $2/bbl, and the average success rate of exploration wells is 76%. At present, CNPC overseas oil and gas exploration still faces challenges such as continuously low international oil prices, a sharp decrease in exploration projects, increasingly fierce competition for new blocks, the inferior quality of conventional oil and gas resources, and increasingly complex exploration objects. The company also has comparatively weak capacity for independent exploration and development of deep-water oil and gas. However, There are still rich undiscovered oil and gas resources around the world. Cross-border integration of advanced technologies will transform exploration concepts and technological innovations, so the prospects for overseas oil and gas exploration are broad and promising.