China's state-owned oil major Sinopec is planning to invest 5.4 billion yuan ($772 million) to build 273 gas wells in China's northwestern Ningxia region, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.

The wells, to be located on the Dingbei gas field near Wuzhong city, will have a combined gas production capacity of 1.8 billion cubic metres (bcm) per year, with the first 1 bcm to be completed within two years.

Development at Dingbei will turn the poor, landlocked Ningxia region from gas importer to producer, Xinhua said, without saying when construction would start.

China's top energy producers are raising natural gas output this year by twice as much as in the previous oil rout even as they slash spending due to collapsing oil prices, company officials and analysts have previously said.

($1 = 6.9979 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Dominique Patton; Editing by Edmund Blair)