Abstract: Shale gas which has been widely explored and developed in North America in recent years is a new nature gas source target. It has made a tremendous progress in unconventional nature gas exploration and development all over the world, and has become a typical unconventional nature gas resource which is the latest explored and the fastest development in the last year. Based on the course in North America and progresses in the world of shale gas exploration and development, this paper made an exposition of the main situation of shale gas exploration and development in the world and 5 typical geological characteristics of shale gas, and analyzed resource potential and distribution features of global shale gas, and forecasted 100×1012m3 of shale gas resource potential in China. Furthermore in the paper we also pointed out that the success of shale gas exploration and development in recent 10 years is the most stirring great achievement in oil-gas geological theories and engineering technologies. Shale gas resource is very abundant in the world. Its overall development would bring about a world-wide energy revolution. Finally the paper put forward four suggestions on speeding up shale gas development in China.