Dr. Zhang has twenty-four years experience working for China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). His positions include industry analysis, corporate strategic planning, exploration management, oversea cooperation and coal to clean energy projects. He is highly intelligent, enthusiastic on issues of energy transition and technology transfer such as the big date and AI. He is also an entrepreneur as the managing director of a local technical start-up.

Dr.Zhang holds a Ph.D. (Petroleum Geology and Exploration) from the China University of Geosciences (Beijing) in 1991, and a bachelor degree in Oil Exploration from the Wuhan College of Geology in 1986. He has very good Earth Science knowledge system and published several papers on Organic Geochemistry during his university career.

During his work in CNPC, he spend more than ten years to undertake oil industry analysis and strategic planning at the corporate level. As the head of the Technology Division, his work expands from oil and gas exploration and production, to engineering and advances equipment and technologies. His first IT training was conducted in San Francisco to learn SUN workstation and database in 1995. This was a good move for him who can understand more quickly on the Internet technologies and AI issues up-to-date. 

Allocating to CNOOC oversea business unit, he moved to London as the technical manager focusing Africa and Middle East upstream opportunities both onshore and deep water. He works actively and travelling frequently for meetings, negotiations and project coordination. He has played different management roles on a couple of PSC projects in Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Kenya on behalf of CNOOC International. During this period, he enrolled the academic session for language learning in the London School of Economics and Political Science(LSE) in 2009. He was a conference speaker on CNOOC E&P activities in London and Capetown with his colleagues. Dr. Zhang also worked for CNOOC New Energy Investment Co. Ltd after his assignment back to Beijing in 2010.Part of his working is to evaluate the coal mines and environmental impacts for the large scale coal to clean energy projects. .

Dr. Zhang was a ten-years member of AAPG, SPE and CPS since early 1990s. He joined Energy Institute and EAGE during his work in London. He was appointed the deputy director of Resource & Big Data Branch, China Society of Natural Resources since 2019, and he is a distinguished scholars of Chinese Petroleum Society since 2023. He holds the National Certificate of Carbon Emission Inspector. Dr. Zhang is also the managing director of a local technical start-up.

Dr. Zhang could be contacted via email oilray@163.com