Technological innovation is an important support and powerful driving force for the Company to promote high-quality development and build a world-class comprehensive international energy enterprise. With innovation as our top strategy, we continue to invest in science and technology and enhance our competency in research and development. We have built innovation capabilities along the industrial chain to create value for now and the future.
We have made new breakthroughs in independent innovation, and obtained and promoted a batch of new important technology achievements, which further enhanced the capability of independent innovation and core competitiveness, and strongly supported and led the development of our main business.
Innovation Platforms
We have 84 research institutes, 21 national R&D institutions and 54 Company-level key laboratories and experimental bases, covering the upstream, midstream and downstream sectors, and supporting and leading the Company's sustainable development.
Maintaining a two-level (national-level and provincial/industry-level) skills cultivation platform, we foster a talent pool mainly including 24 academicians and more than 30,000 researchers. We own a total of approximately 20,000 patents obtained in China and overseas.
Technological Achievements
We regard innovation as our top priority and a critical step, and we have encouraged the building of an open ecological environment for innovation. We led and participated in the "4Mt/a coal indirect liquefaction technology innovation, development and industrialization" project, which won the first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. Our other two R&D projects, "Key technology and its application for efficient development of coalbed methane reserves in complicated geological conditions" and "Packaged technology for catalytic cracked gasoline super-depth hydrodesulfurization-alkene phased controlled transformation", won second prizes of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. "Key technology for new polymer flooding to significantly enhance recovery" won the second prize of National Technology Invention.
Technological Cooperation
We continue to deepen the construction of strategic partnerships, consolidate our strategic alliances with international companies to promote the sharing of superior technical resources and the exchange of cutting-edge technologies, and promote cooperative research and talent training with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China University of Petroleum and other research institutes and colleges and universities in the frontier of oil and gas exploration and development, new materials, new energy and other fields.
Digital Transformation and Intelligent Operation
PetroChina regards digital transformation as a major strategic measure to modernize its corporate governance system and governance capabilities, and vigorously promotes digital, networked and intelligent development. The use of digital technologies represented by cloud computing, the Internet of Things, 5G, big data, artificial intelligence, etc., drives business model reconstruction, management model transformation, business model innovation and core capability improvement, realizing industrial transformation and upgrading and value growth.
PetroChina makes efforts in such key orientations as intelligent technology and product innovation, integrates digital technology into the products, services and processes of the oil and gas industry chain, reconstructs the value system, adjusts production relations, and transforms from a capacity-driven development model to an innovation-driven development model. PetroChina will focus on forming new industries, new business forms, and new models that conform to the characteristics of “Digital PetroChina”, based on new elements, new driving forces and new capabilities. Adhering to the general principles of “value orientation, strategic leadership, innovation drive and platform support”, PetroChina implements digital transformation in accordance with the three main lines of business development, management reform and technology empowerment and, through the construction of industrial Internet technology systems and an application ecosystem that takes cloud platforms as its core, creates a digital transformation strategic framework.