China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) is to start building a second west-east natural gas pipeline next year, the Shanghai Securities News reported on Friday.

The new pipeline will run 6,500 kilometers from northwest China's gas-rich Xinjiang to the populous southern province of Guangdong, carrying 30 billion cubic meters of gas a year.

CNPC would start by laying a pipeline in Xinjiang in August or September next year and the project would be completed in 2010, the report quoted Xue Zhenkui, director of the China Petroleum Pipeline Scientific Research Institute, as saying.

Between Xinjiang and Gansu, the new pipeline would run parallel with the country's first west-east gas pipeline, which went into commercial operation at the end of 2004, extending 4,000 kilometers from the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang and Shanghai.

Branch lines would also be built to connect the two west-east pipelines and gas fields, forming a natural gas network to cover the country.

The project, involving 20,000 kilometers of pipelines, would cost 100 billion yuan, Zhao Zhiming, secretary general of the China Petroleum and Petrochemical Equipment Industry Association, was quoted as saying.

China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) was likely to participate because its Puguang gas field in southwest China's Sichuan Basin would be part of the network, said Zhao.

The network would probably be connected with a natural gas pipeline between China and Kazakhstan.

The first phase of the cross-border project would be completed in 2009 with a capacity of 10 billion cubic meters a year and the remainder would be finished in 2012, increasing capacity by 30 billion cubic meters.

The Xinjiang-Guangdong project was expected to rejuvenate CNPC's manufacturing unit and bring opportunities for Chinese and foreign companies that make compressors, valves and steel products, said Zhao.

CNPC had plans to raise the sales revenues of its manufacturing unit to 26 billion yuan by 2010 period.

(Xinhua News Agency April 6, 2007)