CNPC ensures sufficient gas supplies amid cold snap

China National Petroleum Corporation, the country's largest oil and gas producer by annual output, has maximized domestic gas production while ensuring sufficient gas imports to ensure sufficient supplies to guard against the cold snap.

It has contributed 11.3 percent of the country's extra gas demand during the heating season. The country has seen a 10 percent year-on-year growth of daily gas demand since the heating started on Nov 15, it said.

The company, which is better known as PetroChina, is the biggest supplier of gas in China, accounting for more than 70 percent of the total. It said earlier it would produce more than 128 billion cubic meters of natural gas this year.

It will supply 98.67 billion cubic meters of gas, sourced from home and abroad, during the heating season. That will mark an increase of 10 billion cubic meters from the same period last year.

To ensure sufficient gas supply, CNPC has also stepped up gas imports, negotiating with countries including Russia and Myanmar and increasing the gas imports from the China-Russia East natural gas pipeline in advance, a pipeline expected to achieve a capacity of 28 million cubic meters per day by January, from the current 14 million cubic meters per day, to pump sufficient gas to the world's second-largest economy.

The China-Russia East natural gas pipeline, the China-Central Asia gas pipeline and the China-Myanmar gas pipeline, the biggest investment by CNPC in Myanmar as well as the first large-scale oil and gas pipeline facility across the entire territory of Myanmar, have all helped ensure energy security of China, it said.

The company's domestic gas fields also contributed to ensuring the heating season supply. According to CNPC, the company's Changqing oilfield, China's largest oil-and-gas field, saw its production exceed 60 million tons of oil - equivalent to crude oil and natural gas in 2020 - to hit a record high.

Located in Northwest China's Erdos basin, Changqing oilfield has produced 24.5 million tons of crude oil and 44.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas (equivalent to about 35.5 million tons of crude oil) as of Sunday, it said.