The university is an important scientific research base for petroleum and petrochemical industry. In all, there are 82 key academic institutions and bases approved by governments, enterprises and public institutions, such as the national key laboratory of heavy oil, the national engineering laboratory of marine geophysical prospecting and exploration equipment storage, the key laboratory for reservoir geology of Shandong province, the key laboratory for oilfield chemistry of Shandong province, the key laboratory for oil and gas reservoir security of Shandong province, MOE engineering research center for new oil and gas processing technology, MOE engineering research center of new petroleum and petrochemical equipment and technology.

It also has built three innovation centers of Shandong province on high efficiency utilization of inferior heavy oil, marine oil and gas equipment technology, tight (shale) oil and gas exploration and development. Since the ‘twelfth five-year’ plan, 957 projects have been authorized, such as 973 plan, 863 plan, supporting plans, key programs and sponsored projects, which has obtained 3.9 billion yuan as the research funds in total. 

Since the ‘twelfth five-year’ plan, the university has won 266 items of academic awards at or above the provincial level, including 10 national awards, 4top awards at the provincial and ministerial level and 58 first prizes; 4404 patents got authorized, including 24 foreign patents, 1748 domestic patents, and 6 patents wining Excellence Award for China Patent, 1 patent winning the First Patent Award of Shandong province. The number of patents heads the list of universities of the national first-rate discipline construction. 504 software copyrights have been registered; 9467 thesis included by SCI, EI and ISTP, of which 3444 are indexed by SCI and 5176 by EI.