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china president hu jintao to inaugurate turkmenistan gas pipeline |
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Saturday, 12 December 2009President of China Hu Jintao will inaugurate the opening of the natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan when he visits the country on 13-14 December, Dow Jones reported citing a senior foreign ministry official.
Construction on the pipeline, which runs through Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and China's Xinjiang province, began in July last year. The heads of state for Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan will also attend the ceremony, said Duan Jielong, director general of the department of treaty and law.
China is scheduled to receive 5 billion cubic meters of natural gas next year through the pipeline. The line will have its initial transmission capacity doubled to 30 billion cubic meters a year by October 2010.
Gas imports to China via the pipeline are expected to help alleviate severe shortages in some domestic markets. Demand has soared since beginning of November due to colder-than-usual winter weather across the country.
Bilateral trade volume between Turkmenistan and China rose 135% in 2008 to $830 million, Duan said. In the first 10 months this year, trade rose 38% from the same period last year to $874 million, he said.
Prior to his arrival in Turkmenistan, Hu will visit Kazakhstan on 12-13 December, Duan said.
While the ministry didn't flag any upcoming agreements, Zhang Xiyun, director general of the foreign ministry's department of Central Asian affairs, said China's cooperation with Central Asian countries on energy has been smooth.
"Since both sides need this cooperation, it will naturally continue and develop," Zhang said at Thursday's briefing.
China has been by far the biggest foreign investor in Kazakhstan's oil and gas industry over the last few years.
Resource-rich Kazakhstan produced 70.6 million metric tons of oil and gas condensate in 2008, or about 1.4 million barrels a day, and hopes to raise annual oil output to more than 100 million tons, or 2 million barrels a day, by 2015.
China National Petroleum Corp., the nation's top oil and gas producer, signed a deal in April to lend $5 billion to KazMunaiGas and to jointly acquire Kazakh oil and gas producer MangistauMunaiGas.
CNPC also holds a 67% stake in PetroKazakhstan Inc., which produced 10 million tons of crude in 2007, equivalent to about 200,000 barrels a day.
China receives around 7 million tons a year of crude oil via pipeline from Kazakhstan, and this volume is expected to increased to 10 million tons in 2010. There are longer-term plans to double the imports to 20 million tons. |
Saturday, 12 December 2009
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