China's oil titan China National Petroleum Corp. (PetroChina Group) said Wednesday that the China-Uzbekistan section of the planned Central Asia-China natural gas pipeline started constructing on June 30.

A PetroChina Group executive disclosed yesterday that the China-Kazakhstan section of the pipeline would kick off construction on July 9, signaling that all parts of the pipeline initiated construction.

The Central Asia-China natural gas pipeline, starting from Turkmenistan and going through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to West China's Xinjiang, is scheduled to start operating one of its two pipelines that are laid in a parallel manner in 2009 and the other one in 2010. After full operation, it will annually transport about 30 billion steres of natural gas, which accounts for half of China's output in 2007, from Central Asia to China in the following 30 years.

Moreover, PetroChina Group started building a Sino-Turkmenistan natural gas project in Turkmenistan at June-end, and the project is expected to contribute part of the natural gas to be transported to China in the future.



Copyright (C) 2008 SinoCast, All Rights Reserved