Sinopec has discovered a natural well with a daily output of more than one million cubic meters in Sichuan Province, according to a statement released Monday on the company's website.

The Yuanba-204 well has a potential to produce daily about 1.3 million cubic meters. It is the biggest and the second well with a daily production above 1 million cubic meters in the Yuanba gas field located in the northeastern part of Sichuan, said the statement.

Surging natural gas demand during the unusually cold winter last year caused gas shortages in central and eastern China, something the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) blamed on a lack of pipelines and gas reserves. The NDRC priced the natural gas up one quarter in early June to narrow the gap between domestic natural gas and the international level and to reduce the losses for oil giants caused by imports.

Natural gas consumption of the first half of the year grew 22 percent over the same period last year, according to the NDRC.

The NDRC warned of a possibility of natural gas shortage this winter, though domestic output in the first half of the year rose 11 percent to 46 billion cubic meters, and gas import grew about 160 percent to reach 7 billion cubic meters, thanks to the new west-east pipeline that starting operations at the end of last year bringing natural gas from central Asia.

China has also planned to build a pipeline to Myanmar by 2012 to import 12 billion cubic meters of the cleaner fossil fuel every year. Natural gas made up 4.2 percent of China's total energy consumption in 2009, up from 2.4 percent in 2000. The country's target is to bring it up to one 10th by 2020.