Intensive petroleum oil and gas geochemical exploration is an application technology used at the late stage of oil and gas exploration. With this technology, the oil and gas potential of the traps defined by detailed geochemical and geological survey can be evaluated, and the optimum drilling targets can be determined. Intensive petroleum geochemical exploration technology consists of sampling, analyzing, information picking up and interpreting. In this paper, the authors have discussed the background for developing intensive petroleum geochemical exploration technology. On the basis of a discussion on the application results in east and central China, this paper deals with the prospects of applying this technology to oil and gas exploration in western China.