China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., the nation's second-largest oil company, will increase natural gas supplies in winter as demand for heating rises.

Asia's biggest oil refiner will increase daily supplies to Shandong province by 57 percent to 2.6 million cubic meters during the coolest months of the year, Sinopec, as China Petroleum is known, said in a statement in the in-house publication Sinopecnews today. Annual gas sales to Shandong in eastern China will rise by 42 percent to 601 million cubic meters, it said.

China, the world's largest energy consumer after the U.S., aims to nearly double the use of the cleaner-burning fuel by 2010 to cut reliance on oil and coal. The Beijing-based state oil company increased gas output by 12 percent to 6 billion cubic meters in the first nine months of 2007, it said Oct. 30.

Sinopec will accelerate exploration and development at the Daniudi gas field in Inner Mongolia to bolster supplies, it said in today's statement.

Sinopec plans to increase daily gas sales to northern China to 5.5 million cubic meters this winter, to ease tightness in supplies to Beijing and the city of Zhengzhou in Henan province, it said.