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PetroChina to lift gas output over 5 years

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PetroChina, the largest oil and gas producer, aims to raise gas output by an average rate of 10.6 per cent annually in the next five years, despite facing technical challenges in developing what it describes as China's largest gas discovery in decades.

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The company has invested in overseas unconventional natural gas projects - which are also technically difficult to develop - to gain experience that might help solve its domestic drilling problems. Vice-chairman Zhou Jiping said PetroChina aimed to produce 120 billion cubic metres of raw gas in 2015, up from 72.5 bcm last year.

'Growing output of gas, a green energy, is a key part of our 2011-15 development plan. Gas contributes only 3.8 per cent of China's energy consumption, compared with 24 per cent in developed nations.'

He said PetroChina's gas strategy included the development of gas that was technically difficult to extract, such as coal-bed methane, tight gas and shale gas, which stuck tightly to underground rocks or coal seams. Technology breakthroughs in recent years, especially in the United States, had helped made their production more economical.

Zhou was speaking after the firm announced a 35.4 per cent net profit growth to 140 billion yuan (HK$166 billion), 5 per cent ahead of the 133.33 billion yuan average estimate of 22 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

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Although the then vice-chairman Jiang Jiemin in 2007 announced the nation's 'largest gas field discovery since the establishment of the republic in 1949', Zhou said progress has been hampered by 'unique gas reservoirs that lack lateral conformity'.

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