On July 20, 1999 (the eighth day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar), oil was found on the roof of the world.

Xizang's history of not producing oil since ancient times has finally come to an end. On July 20, 1999, China Xinxing Petroleum Company announced that after eight years of hard work, it recently obtained industrial oil flow through steam thermal recovery tests under the 400-meter buried layer of Well Lunqian 3 in the Lunpola Basin, northern Tibet at an altitude of 4700 meters. During the test production of Well Lunqian 3 from July 9 to 11, 103 cubic meters of oil were sprayed out of its own and more than 30 yuan of oil per day. Well Lunqian-3 is the highest oil exploration well reported in the world; the Lunpola Basin in northern Tibet is the highest oil and gas basin known in the world; and the northern Tibet working area is the highest oil and gas exploration and development area reported in the world with the worst natural conditions. The idea of looking for oil in Xizang originated in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. From the 1950s to the early 1980s, after a large amount of basic work in the early stages of oil census was carried out, this work stopped because no industrial oil flow was found. In the early 1990s, the State Planning Commission listed oil and gas exploration in Xizang as a special project, and Xinxing Petroleum Company (formerly the Petroleum Geology and Marine Geology Bureau of the Ministry of Geology and Mineral Resources) undertook this work. Over the past eight years, the company has overcome extremely harsh natural conditions and invested more than 6400 people to carry out a large number of petroleum geological surveys in the Lunpola Basin, Qiangtang Basin, Angla Rencuo Basin, and Gamba Basin in southern Tibet, and discovered and implemented More than 40 favorable oil and gas structural traps have been achieved, and breakthroughs have been made in the shallow and mid-deep layers respectively after drilling evaluation. According to comprehensive calculations, the potential oil and gas resources in the Lunpola Basin are 100 - 150 million tons. The successful thermal test of Well Lunqian 3 can submit proven oil reserves of more than 3 million tons. The outline of a medium-sized oil field with reserves of tens of millions has already appeared. According to reports, most of the oil in the Lunpola Basin is heavy oil, and Well Lunqian 3 is a high-viscosity heavy oil, and the oil cannot be recovered to the surface by conventional methods. Xinxing Petroleum Company solved the problem of boiler combustion in a low-oxygen environment, making heat recovery successful. In addition, the thermal oil reservoir of Well Lunqian 3 is only 400 meters deep, and shallow oil production is beneficial to increasing production. This shows that Xizang oil has the conditions to enter the development and production stage.