China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) announced that it plans to produce new shale oil from formations within the area of the existing Daqing oilfield, Reuters reported.

According to a statement,  new production process from this site will help to compensate its output natural decline. It noted that Daqing field has pumped for 60 years, but its reserves are quickly declining, which pushed the company to  turn to shale formations.

CNPC elaborated that it targets to produce 1 million tons of oil annually by 2025 from the Gulong shale oil formations at Daqing.

This followed drilling several exploration wells which proved high volumes of oil during their test production.