NEW YORK, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese annual production of natural gas by 2024 would grow 51 percent from 2018, a senior expert with the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday.China's domestic natural gas output would reach 242 billion cubic meters in 2024, up by 82 billion cubic meters from the 160-billion-cubic-meter output in 2018, said Peter Fraser, head of division on gas, coal and power markets, citing IEA's recent medium-term report Gas 2019.
The hefty increment of China's natural gas output would come from both conventional and unconventional gas, Fraser said on the sidelines of a panel discussion of the report.
"We see much increased activity on exploration and production in last year ... We just think that level of production increases possible," Fraser told Xinhua.
China churned out 161 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2018, up 7.5 percent year on year, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics.
Fraser said China's recent steps to liberalize exploration and development of oil and gas industry would certainly be beneficial to increasing production in China.
China allowed foreign players to engage in exploration and development of oil and gas in China independently at the end of June following the removal of approval requirement of overall development plan with Sino-foreign oil and gas projects in February 2019.
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