Boost shale gas exploration supervision: watchdog

While China welcomes the booming shale gas exploration period, the country's land watchdog has asked to boost supervision over the unconventional energy's exploration activities, according to a statement released on Thursday.

The statement released by the Ministry of Land and Resources has eight parts dealing with areas such as environmental protection, safe production techniques and technological innovation.

China has taken a series of measures to develop shale gas exploration, in order to reach its target of having a production capacity of 6.5 billion cubic meters by 2015.

On Nov 5, the Ministry of Finance said that for each cubic meter of shale gas produced, the government will pay 0.4 yuan ($0.06) to developers.

In the country's second round of tenders in late October, private and foreign-funded joint ventures were first allowed to bid for drilling the resource.