Tarim basin locates in the southern part of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Geographically,it is circled by the huge Tianshan and Karakunlun Mountains and Altuntag, occurs as a large intra continental, inter mountainous basin with an extent of 560 000 km2. Taklamkan Desert, 330 000 km2, situates in the central part. Great foothill alluvial fan and flood plain surround the basin.
Tarim Basin is the largest sedimentary basin of China. The remaining thickness of sedimentary rocks is 16 000 m, maximum accumulated thickness is 25 000 m. Residual total volume of sedimentary rocks is 400 milLion m3. Stratum involves Sinian to lower Permian of marine to paralic facies and upper Permian to Quaternary of continental facies. After works for more than 30 years, specially intensive exploration in recent 6 years, 8 fields with proven and control reserves of over 40 m:illion tons and a lot of other discoveries are obtained by China National Petroleum Corporation. The second round petroleum resource assessment held by CNPC estimates the total petroleum resource is 19.15 trillion tons. Tarim is one of large unexplored basin. Tarim is the hope of Chinese petroleum future, attracts the interest of major oil companies.