Abstract: Under the new situation, PetroChina’s overseas exploration business faces double challenges in the large-scale expansion of the stock exploration assets and acquisition of the new high-quality exploration assets, showing the unclear orientation in the future, which is an issue to be solved urgently. Based on the operation cycle of overseas exploration business and the key exploration indicators, three indexes of exploration investment, value return and exploration risk in strategic dimension are proposed. Then the development achievements of the seven major international oil companies, including bp, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, Eni, Chevron, Equinor and Shell, in 10 years from 2010 to 2019 are analyzed and five strategic types are classified, namely the low risk-low investment-high return type, high risk-high investment-low return type, high risk-low investment-low return type, low risk-high investment-low return type and low risk-low investment-low return type.Furthermore, the stories behind the realization of their exploration strategic objectives are analyzed for reference.