CHENGDU, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- Natural gas producers in the Sichuan Basin, China's largest natural gas base, are stepping up their production capacities to deal with the cold wave sweeping across the country.

In southwest China's Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality, located in the Sichuan Basin, urban gas consumption has risen from 50 million cubic meters per day to 70 million cubic meters per day, a 40 percent increase from the peak of the same period last year, according to the PetroChina Southwest Oil and Gasfield Company, one of the major energy developers in the basin.

The company has been implementing a series of measures since last November to increase capacity and supply gas to cities, maintaining its daily natural gas production at above 102 million cubic meters.

The Weirong shale gas field in Sichuan on Wednesday completed the construction of the first phase of its annual production capacity expansion, expanding 1 billion cubic meters, according to a branch of Sinopec, China's largest oil refiner.

The gas field currently produces 3.5 million cubic meters of gas per day, which can meet the daily needs of about 7 million households at most. When fully completed in 2022, it is expected to have an annual output of 3 billion cubic meters, which can meet the annual needs of 16 million households.

Data shows that the Sichuan Basin produced about 56.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2020, an increase of 6 billion cubic meters from 2019 and accounting for 52 percent of the national increase in natural gas.