China's Daqing oilfield, operated by PetroChina Co, may continue producing for at least another 50 years as technology used to extract crude from the nation's largest onshore source of the fuel improves.

Production from the field will be maintained at 2005's level of 45 million metric tons (about 900,000 barrels a day) for the next five years, Han Xuejian, mayor of the northeastern city of Daqing, in Heilongjiang Province, said in an interview on Thursday.

China pumped the first oil from the Daqing field in 1959 and output peaked at 55 million tons over a 27-year period. The field had produced 1.9 billion tons of oil by the end of last year, accounting for more than 40 per cent of the country's onshore output. PetroChina got 46 million tons of oil from Daqing in 2004.

"We're confident of using better technology to keep the field pumping for 100 years" since it started producing, Han said. "We want to continue to contribute significantly to China's oil industry."

China may increase consumption of the fuel 5.5 per cent in 2007, after an estimated 6.1 per cent gain in 2006 because of the nation's economic growth, the International Energy Agency said July 12.

Demand will rise to 7.4 million barrels a day in 2007, or 390,000 barrels a day more than 2006, the Paris-based IEA said in its Monthly Oil Market Report.

Bloomberg News

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