China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, China's largest oil refiner, said on Jul 23 it has found 2,000 cubic meters of daily gas flows in a coal-bed methane (CBM) test well in China's central coal-rich Shanxi province. 

According to the company's news website report, the test well, Yan-1, is located in Ningxian County of Shanxi province. The report said the daily output figure might have been updated as the output of well keeps growing after the latest calculation registered on Jul 15.

After two years of operation, besides the Yan-1 discovery, Sinopec has also made other significant CBM discoveries in Shanxi's Qinshui basin and Inner Mongolia's Erdos basin, according to the reports.

Nevertheless, the discovery is a good start for Sinopec, who is quite late for the CBM business compared with its brother company PetroChina, the country's largest oil and gas producer, who is leading the oil companies' operation on CBM business.