This paper briefly reviews the world's current deep water petroleum exploration and development technology, primary equipment, and a overview of the development situation of huge deep water oil and gas fields all over the world. Meanwhile, this study also reviews the developmental history of Chinese offshore oil exploration and extraction from 34 years ago, which began after the establishment of China National Offshore Oil Corporation. At present, CNOOC has the ability to develop the offshore oil fields within water depth of 300 meters and produce about 50 million tons oil annually. The main deepwater engineering facilities such as HYSY981 Deepwater semi-submersible drilling platform were first built. In 2014, the first deep water gas field Liwan3-1 began production. However, there are more challenges for Chinese offshore oil development efforts such as typhoons in South China Sea, ice in Bohai Bay, high viscosity and pour point, high content of CO2 complex reservoir characteristics, remote flow assurance and control, etc.. The strategic development plan for China’s future offshore energy development is presented in this paper.