A high quality gas flow has been drilled from a test well in Southwest China's Sichuan Province by the Southern Branch of the China National Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec), according to sources from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) under the State Council.

SASAC, supervisor of the country's key state-owned enterprises, said in a press release Tuesday that the Heba No. 1 Well obtained a daily natural gas flow of 296,000 cubic meters of high quality gas that does not contain sulfureted hydrogen.

Experts held that this breakthrough demonstrates the huge potential of gas reserves in the Tongnanba formation, located in the center of the Daba Mountains.

The Tongnanba formation has a surface area of more than 800 square kilometers, second only to the Weiyuan formation in the Sichuan Basin. The manager of Sinopec Southern Branch, Yang Fangzhi, said there should be no problem finding gas reserves of 150 billion cubic meters in the area by 2010.