Almost all of the 2,600 production staff in PetroChina's
Changqing Gas Field in northwest China will continue working during
this year's Spring Festival holiday to guarantee the natural gas
supply to 15 big cities in north China, said a senior company
executive.
Sun Shuguo, director of the company's production control office,
said said on Monday that the company's production had been in high
gear to meet the soaring demand for winter heating in north China
since late January.
"It will be our busiest Spring Festival. I have never seen
nearly all of my colleagues at work in the holiday," said Luo Shan,
a 23-year-old technician, who has given up the Spring Festival for
three years.
She said she could understand the demand, since temperatures
outside her production workshop had dropped to minus 25 degrees
Celsius.
Changqing's average daily gas output was 37.5 million cubic
meters so far this month, two million cubic meters more than in
January, and about 11 million cubic meters more than the same
period last year, said Sun.
Gas was piped to 15 big cities in north China, including Beijing
and Tianjin municipalities and Xi'an, capital of northwest China's
Shaanxi Province, where authorities have increased demand for the
clean energy in their efforts to curb urban pollution.
The field, one of China's three gas reserves with an annual gas
output of at least 10 billion cubic meters, has a verified reserve
of 2.1 trillion cubic meters in west China's Ordos Basin.
It yielded 11 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2007. The
output target this year is 15.4 billion cubic meters. Beijing,
which has consumed nearly half of the gas piped from the field, is
still the company's primary consumer.
(Xinhua News Agency February 4, 2008)
