CHONGQING, March 18 (Xinhua) -- China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), the country's largest oil and gas producer, plans to build eight gas storage facilities with a total capacity of 21 billion cubic meters, according to a forum that concluded on Sunday.
The gas storage facilities, located in southwest China's Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality, will cost more than 21 billion yuan (3.3 billion U.S. dollars), said Ma Xinhua, general manager of PetrolChina Southwest Oil and Gasfield Company, a CNPC affiliate.
The first phase of the project, to be built on the basis of two depleted gas fields, will have a capacity of 1.28 billion cubic meters, said Ma.
China has built 25 gas storage facilities with a total capacity of 11.7 billion cubic meters in the past 20 years, serving 200 million residents in 10 provincial-level regions, according to CNPC.
Currently, natural gas makes up 46.4 percent of CNPC's total oil and gas production, becoming a new growth point for the company.
