Abstract: In the hanging wall of faults which controlled the Paleocene depression in the Northwest Palawan Basin in the South China Sea, a large number of ancient terrain height reefs and thick mudstones are well developed, forming important reservoir cap combination type in the study area. Through years of exploration and development, 27 reef oil and gas fields have been discovered. In this article, the Northwest Palawan basin evolution and reef formation in this basin have been discussed, and the seismic response characteristics of reef oil and gas reservoir discovered in this basin are summarized, which lay a solid foundation for valid identification of reef reservoirs. Meanwhile, the reef reservoirs after containing oil and gas are characterized by high impedance and lowfrequency. The sparse spike inversion method and filtering method by setting threshold value of seismic attribute have been used to detect hydrocarbon bearing conditions of reefs to improve the reef reservoir exploration success rate.