CHONGQING, China- China's Sinopec  aims to boost its domestic natural gas output to 48 billion cubic meters (bcm) by 2025, a nearly 60% rise from 2020, as it looks to cut carbon emissions, a senior company researcher said on Tuesday.

The state oil and gas major has  pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, relying on producing more gas versus oil in its portfolio and investing in hydrogen as a transportation fuel. 

Sinopec will focus on tapping gas resources in the Sichuan basin in the southwest and Erdos in northern China, Zhu Xueqian, a gas specialist with the firm's Petroleum Exploration and Development Research Institute, told an industry seminar.

The company aims to produce 13 bcm of shale gas from the Sichuan basin by 2025, which would make up nearly 30% of its total gas output, Zhu said.

Sinopec, also one of the country's top importers of liquefied natural gas (LNG), will increase its receiving capacity by expanding existing terminals at Tianjin, Qingdao and Beihai and building new ones in Longkou of Shandong province and Liuhe in Zhejiang, she said.

She did not give a total capacity target for Sinopec but said by 2025 China will operate more than 30 LNG terminals able to handle nearly 200 million tonnes of imported super-chilled gas.

That is more than double the current Chinese total LNG import capacity of 96 million tonnes, as reported by the state-backed Chongqing Oil and Gas Exchange.

(Reporting by Muyu Xu and Shivani Singh; writing by Chen Aizhu in Singapore; Editing by Sonali Paul) ((aizhu.chen@thomsonreuters.com; +65 6870 3284; Reuters Messaging: aizhu.chen.reuters.com@reuters.net))