By Xiao Wan (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-03 13:35

Increasing energy demand in the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas, the two most developed regions in China, will be met in part with China's second west-east natural gas pipeline.

Construction began this month on the trans-regional pipeline that will carry gas from Turkmenistan and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to Shanghai and southern Guangdong province after traversing 12 provinces and autonomous regions.

The 9,102 km pipeline, which will transport 30 billion cu m of gas yearly, will cost an estimated 142.2 billion yuan ($20 billion).

The project's main line will start from Khorgos in Xinjiang and extend 4,843 km to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province. It will also have eight feeder lines.

The western segment of the main line is scheduled to be operational by 2009, followed by the eastern portion in June in 2011, says Jiang Jiemin, general manager of China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), leader of the pipeline construction.

Most of the gas for the pipeline will be extracted from two contracted fields in Turkmenistan. Two domestic natural gas regions - Tarim and Changqing - will serve as backup sources.

Analysts say that construction of the pipeline is of strategic significance to China and will help optimize the country's energy structure.

The project will further ease the energy supply pressure in the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas. Use of natural gas, a clean energy, will further help with environmental protection, they say.

As the nation's economic and modernization boom continue, China plans to extend its oil and gas pipelines by nearly 60 percent by 2010, Tang Yali, vice-president of PetroChina Natural Gas &Pipeline Co Ltd under CNPC, tells China Business Weekly.

The nation's oil and gas pipelines are expanding at the fastest rate since the Ninth Five-Year Plan period (1996-2000). "The oil and gas pipeline industry has seen 14 percent growth year-on-year since 1996. Between 2000 and 2005, China built more pipelines than it did in all preceding years," he says.

The country's first massive west-east gas pipeline that starts in Xinjiang's Tarim Basin and extends to Shanghai was put into commercial operation in late 2004.

Its 4,000 km length crosses 10 provinces to deliver a12 billion cu m of natural gas yearly. It is projected to supply a stable gas supply for 30 years.

China's second-largest oil firm Sinopec has also started construction of a pipeline project to pump gas from its Puguang field in Sichuan province to Shanghai.

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