AWARDEE OF EARTH SCIENCES PRIZE

LI DESHENG

Abstract

Prof.Li Desheng,a petroleum geologist,was born in Shanghai,China in October,1922.He graduated from the Department of Geology,National Central University in 1945.He has worked in most of the major oil producing areas of China,including the Yumen,Taiwan,Ordos,Yanchang,Daqing,Sichuan,Shengli,Dagang,and Renqiu oil and gas fields.Since 1978,he has been the chief geologist of the Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development under the China National Petroleum Corporation in Beijing.He has held concurrent professorships at Nanjing University,Zhejiang University,China University of Geosciences,University of Petroleum,Southwest Petroleum Institute,Northwest University,and Xian Petroleum Institute,and has been a visiting professor at the University of Oklahoma in the United States.He was the member of Geological Society of China from 1944,Chinese Geophysical Society from 1947,standing counselor of the Chinese Petroleum Society and the Chinese Society of Oceanography from 1983 to 1987.He is a life member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
Li Desheng was elected as a member (Academician) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences from 1991,and member of the Presidium of Chinese Academy of Sciences from 1996.
Because of his contribution to the discovery of Daqing Oil Field,Li Desheng and his colleagues shared the National Science Prize,First Class,in 1982.He also received two National Science and Technology Progress Awards,Special Class,in 1985.One of these awards was for the successful water-injection development project of Daqing oil field.Li Desheng was the main designer of this early-stage water-injection development project.The Second Special Class Award was for a breakthrough in the theory of composite megastructural oil and gas belts in the Bohai Gulf Basin.Li Desheng and his colleagues were the main contributors to the establishment of this theory,which they applied to exploration in the Bohai Basin,a Tertiary rift-depression basin where abundant oil and gas reserves are accumulated in faulted blocks and relatively complex traps.Because of his achievements in the science of petroleum geology, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists awarding Li Desheng the AAPG Distinguished Achievement Award in 1994.
Prof.Li Desheng has published more than 100 papers in Chinese and foreign geoscience journals and several petroleum geology books.Three of these—Subsurface Geology for Petroleum Exploration,1989(in Chinese).Tectonic types of Oil and Gas Basins in China,1991(in English),and Selected Works on Petroleum Geology of Li Desheng,1992(in Chinese)-were published by China Petroleum Press.