China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) plans to raise its natural gas output to a level of 79.3 billion-82.1 billion cubic meters (bcm) this year, the largest Chinese oil and gas producer said in a company newspaper on Tuesday.

That would amount to at least 5 percent more than the 75.5 bcm of gas CNPC produced in 2011.

The state-owned company will aim to improve its technological capability in developing coalbed methane gas and shale gas and push forward gas storage construction, Zhao Zhengzhang, a vice president of PetroChina Co Ltd, was quoted as saying by China Petroleum Daily.

CNPC's oil and gas assets are operated by listed PetroChina .

CNPC produced 2.15 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil last year, up 2 percent from a year earlier.

Rival China Petrochemical Corp (Sinopec Group) produced 1.31 million bpd of crude oil and 14.6 bcm of gas in 2011 from domestic and overseas fields, up 7.6 percent and 16.8 percent, respectively, from a year earlier, Chairman Fu Chengyu said on Feb 3.

The group, operating its key assets via listed Sinopec Corp , the largest refiner in Asia, processed 4.38 million bpd of crude oil last year, 2.7 percent higher than in 2010, Fu said.