CHONGQING, Dec. 29 -- Sinopec announced Tuesday that its Fuling shale gas project in Chongqing in southwest China has an annual production capacity of 5 billion cubic meters.

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, Sinopec said.

The gas field has been producing 15 million cubic meters of gas every day for a month, which means it has an annual production capacity of 5 billion cubic meters. 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 meters 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 meters of shale gas, as confirmed by the Ministry of Land and Resources.