BEIJING, Mar. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Crude oil output from China's Daqing oil field would fall 7 percent a year until 2010, signaling the fast approaching demise of the country's largest field if new technology isn't found to revive production, Xinhua reported Wednesday.

    The fall will bring Daqing's crude output down to 30 million tons by 2010, Xinhua reported, quoting Ge Ruyin, mayor of Daqing city in the northeast Heilongjiang Province where Daqing is located.

    With production falling so fast, Daqing's annual output would fall to 10 million tons by 2020, the report said.

    Daqing, which was put into production in 1960 and had an annual output of more than 50 million tons between 1975 and last year. However, output fell to 48.4 million tons last year.

    The fall in Daqing's crude production indicates the oil field is facing imminent exhaustion of exploitable oil reserves, the report said. Daqing has 2.2 billion tons of exploitable oil reserve and currently only 500 million tons remain untapped.

    The management of Daqing field hopes to develop new drilling technology and discover new oil and gas reserves to revive production levels.(SD-Agencies)