The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) announced on Monday that the route of China's second West to East natural gas pipeline has been decided. Gas imported from Central Asia will be piped to the Pearl River and Yangtze River delta areas.

The pipeline would cross 13 Chinese regions, carrying natural gas from central Asian countries, including Turkmenistan, and northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region into eastern and southern China, including Shanghai and Guangdong Provinces.

The main line would measure 4,859 kilometers long. The total length, including branch lines, would exceed 7,000 kilometers, said the CNPC, the sole investor in the project and the country's largest oil company.

Construction would begin in 2008. Gas supplies are expected to be available in 2010. Design estimates estimate the annual transmission volume at 30 billion cubic meters.

The CNPC signed a production sharing contract and gas sales and purchase agreement with Turkmenistan in July. They agreed to import 30 billion cubic meters of gas annually through the planned Central Asia Gas Pipeline for the next 30 years.

The imported gas would be piped into the second West to East natural gas pipeline in Horgos, Xinjiang, according to the CNPC.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planner, have approved the project. Feasibility research is expected to be finished by the end of October.

The pipeline is the second after China's first West to East natural gas pipeline that went into operation in 2004. The pipeline is significant toward improving China's energy consumption needs.

The government plans to raise the ratio of natural gas in its energy consumption structure by 2.5 percentage points to 5.3 percent by 2010.

According to estimates from the CNPC, full operation of the second West to East pipeline will raise the ratio by one to two percentage points, while replacing 76.8 million tons of coal and reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide by 1.66 million tons. Carbon dioxide would be reduced by 150 million tons.

The first West to East pipeline pipes gas from the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang to Shanghai. It transmits 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually.

The pipeline would connect Central Asia to China's economically prosperous Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta. This would also link natural gas fields in the Tarim, Junggar, Tuha and Erdos basins. The second West to East pipeline would improve China's energy consumption structure by increasing natural gas use and promoting international energy cooperation, experts stated.

China's booming demand for natural gas has prompted fierce competition.

China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), China's second largest oil firm, said that it plans to start construction of its Sichuan-to East-China Gas Project to transmit gas from the Puguang field in southwestern Sichuan Province to Shanghai at the end of this month.

The Sinopec project is estimated as a 63.2 billion yuan (US$8.3 billion) investment. Gas supplies are expected to begin by the end of 2008, said the company in one of its interim results.

Sources from Sinopec said that the company was also planning to transmit natural gas from the Puguang gas field to supply the Pearl River Delta.

(Xinhua News Agency August 28, 2007)