PetroChina，Asia's largest producer of oil and gas, has struck a large natural gas discovery in northwest China's Xinjiang region with an initial estimated reserve exceeding 100 billion cubic meters.

This marks another breakthrough in the state oil firm's natural gas development in the region, following a similar-sized discovery at Tarim basin in September last year.

PetroChina tapped 610,000 cubic meters of daily gas flow and 106.3 cubic meters of crude oil at exploration well Hu-1, located in an exploration zone totalling 15,000 square kilometers at the southern rim of the Junggar basin, Xinhua said.

The oil and gas flows were struck at around 7,400 meters below the earth's surface.

Near the discovery, PetroChina is drilling three more exploration wells - Letan 1, Tianwan 1 and Tianan-1.

Xinjiang is among the top areas for PetroChina's domestic exploration and production spending as the state energy giant has vowed to spend 150 billion yuan ($22.90 billion) between 2018 and 2020 to boost total oil and gas output at the region to 1 million barrels per day oil equivalent.