China Petroleum & Chemical Corp has found geological reserves of 1.73 billion metric tons, about 12.6 billion barrels, of oil equivalent at the Tahe field in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, making it potentially larger than PetroChina Co's Jidong Nanpu discovery.

Sinopec, as China Petroleum is known, had 745 million tons of proven geological reserves at the Tahe field by the end of 2007, parent China Petrochemical Corp said in a statement yesterday. Tahe has become Sinopec's second largest oil producing base with the fastest-growing reserves. Sinopec plans to boost oil output by 14 percent to 6.09 million tons from Tahe this year, it said.

(China Daily July 16, 2008)