BEIJING - China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) said that daily natural gas sales has rebounded to 500 million cubic metres from 460 million cubic metres on Feb.14 as demand improves.

The coronavirus outbreak, which has killed 2,943 and infected more than 80,000 in mainland China, has severely disrupted travel and production at factories.

The oil giant said it has also cut oil throughput by 20% in February amid the virus outbreak in order to reduce increasing inventory pressure, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

CNPC did not reveal the timeframe of the crude run cuts nor its current refining utilisation level.

(Reporting by Muyu Xu and Shivani Singh; Editing by Kim Coghill) ((muyu.xu@thomsonreuters.com; +86 10 56692117;))