Beijing, Dec 29 (IANS): Sinopec announced on Tuesday that its Fuling shale gas project in China's Chongqing province has an annual production capacity of five billion cubic metres.

More production capacity will be extracted, and hopefully a large-scale gas field with annual production of 10 billion will be on stream by 2017, XInhua cited Sinopec as saying.

The gas field has been producing 15 million cubic metres of gas every day for a month, which means it has an annual production capacity of five billion cubic metres. It can meet daily gas needs for 30 million households.

Since being explored in 2013, the gas field has produced around 3.88 billion cubic metres of gas, Sinopec said.

Shale gas is mainly methane. It is considered a type of clean and new energy resource.

The Fuling field, discovered in 2012, has explored reserves of 380.6 billion cubic metres of shale gas, as confirmed by the land and resources ministry.