URUMQI - The Xinjiang branch of PetroChina, China's largest oil and gas producer, said it had so far churned out more than 100 million tons of heavy crude oil, thanks to its innovative technologies.

The Xinjiang Oilfield Company said that it produced 4.32 million tons of heavy crude oil last year and has become China's largest production base for high-quality naphthenic base heavy oil, a rare raw material for industrial products such as rocket propellant and cold-resistant engine oil.

Qian Genbao, chief technical expert with the company, said that technological innovations have helped the company raise the efficiency of heavy oil recovery by 30 percentage points to over 60 percent, compared with traditional technologies.

The company said its new technologies have also been applied in oilfields in northeast China, as well as in Kazakhstan, Canada and Venezuela.