CHINA has found gas deposits with “verified exploitable” reserves of about 240 billion cubic meters (bcm) around four years of current production, near Sinopec’s massive Puguang field, the official Xinhua agency reported.

The already announced Puguang field accounted for more than half of 600 bcm of reserves Xinhua said were discovered in a basin that could hold up to 3.8 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.

The country’s two biggest energy firms PetroChina and Sinopec will develop the gas fields and production is expected to reach 74 million cubic meters per day by 2010.

The basin sits between the major cities of Wuhan, Chongqing, Chengdu and Xi’an, the report added, which should help secure a market for the gas. Some will be used by local petrochemical plants.

Sinopec has said it expects its Puguang gas field to have capacity to pump 15 bcm of gas annually by 2009, equivalent to a quarter of last year’s national output.

The company is investing 63.2 billion yuan (US$8.18 billion) in developing the field and building a pipeline to carry its gas to the booming east coast, and has already signed up its first tranche of customers around Shanghai.

(SD-Agencies)