China National Petroleum Corp has discovered the country's second largest natural gas reserve of 150 billion cubic meters, China News Services said yesterday.

The discovery, made by its Tarim Petroleum unit, is in the Tarim Basin in the country's northwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the report said, citing a Hong Kong-based newspaper.

CNPC, the country's largest oil producer, started the construction of the well in the basin about 10 years ago. The new well called Dabei, which is 5,198 meters deep, showed a good reserve result in June, said an official from the unit.

Its reserve is next only to the country's biggest find of 205 billion cubic meters, which was detected in the same area and is the source of the natural gas piped from the west to the east.

The west-east pipeline extends 4,000 kilometers and crosses 10 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. It has a designed annual gas transmission capacity of 12 billion cubic meters, and is capable of supplying gas for over 30 years.

The first trial was conducted successfully on Monday and the official exploitation will start soon.

The discovery in Dabei will ensure a yearly increase of 5 billion cubic meters of natural gas to the gas transmission pipeline that extends to Shanghai, the official said.

China now has a confirmed oil reserve of 2.4 billion tons.

Basins in the Xinjiang in the remote northwest and the aging Daqing oilfield, China's biggest, in the northeast are the main oil producing regions in the country.

(Xinhua News Agency October 21, 2006)