A worker checks the natural gas purification equipment at a CNPC plant in Sichuan province. The new storage facilities, when completed, will account for 8-10 percent of the company's total natural gas sales volume. [China Daily]

China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country's largest oil and gas producer, plans to build 10 natural gas storage facilities between 2011 and 2015 to stockpile the fuel in the face of rising demand, said a company executive.

The 10 storage sites will be able to store 22.4 billion cu m of natural gas, the 21st Century Business Herald reported yesterday, quoting CNPC Vice-President Liao Yongyuan. The facilities will be located in regions which have rich gas sources and major consuming areas, including the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and northern China.

The storage facility construction project, part of the government's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), will account for 8 to 10 percent of the company's total natural gas sales volume, said Liao.

At present, the figure is only 3 percent, he added.

CNPC President Jiang Jiemin said that the company had decided to build 12 billion cu m of gas storage in its Changqing oil and gas field, which is located in Erdos in Inner Mongolia.

The facility will be China's largest gas-storage facility.

In order to meet rapidly rising demand for natural gas, China should speed up its construction of storage facilities to better prepare for potential shortages, said analysts.

The country should plan more gas storage in eastern regions, as they are high-consumption areas, they said.

Compared with Western countries, China started gas storage efforts late. Now global volume of gas storage facilities accounts for around 10 percent of total gas consumption. "There is a lot of room for us to improve," said Yang Lei, an official with the oil and gas department under the National Energy Administration (NEA).