OREANDA-NEWS. October 31, 2014. China’s largest oil and gas producer, PetroChina , believes it will achieve or surpass its production target of 2.6 billion cubic meters for 2015, Bloomberg reported.

This comes as good news for China, which originally set a target of 60 billion cubic meters by 2020 but then lowered the target to 12 billion after assessing the geological challenges involved. PetroChina’s output this year may reach 200 million cubic meters, with large-scale commercial production set to begin in the first quarter of next year.

The company has about 3.9 trillion cubic meters of shale gas reserves in Sichuan and Chongqing, and will invest RMB13 billion (USD2.1 billion) on Sichuan shale gas exploration and production this year and the first six months of next year.