Abstract: Oil and gas exploration wells concentrate in the rifted basins with high hydrocarbon enrichment and large area in east China. They are mainly distributed in the medium-deep strata of Paleogene, and nonstructural traps take the dominant. It is concluded that the exploration failure is caused by hydrocarbon sources, reservoirs, traps and their preservation, engineering, and etc.. Research on exploration failure in the past three years shows that the main cause is the traps and their preservation, reservoirs take the second place. To realize the exploration targets in complicated lithologic traps, lowamplitude structures, complex small faulted blocks and deep structural traps, high-resolution seismic acquisition techniques with high signal-to-noise ratio and reservoir predicting techniques need to be improved.

Key words: terrestrial rifted basin, exploration well, failure, factor analysis