Pipeliners

06.07.2006 - MosNews - China and Russia plan to build two natural gas pipelines from Siberia, one extending to China's Xinjiang Uygur region and the other to Heilongjiang province, Chinese state media reported on Thursday, July 6. The official China Daily cited Li Xianglin, Communist Party Secretary of Xinjiang's Altay region, as saying that under the plan Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom would build two pipelines to China to transport 68 billion cubic meters of gas every year. The pipeline will connect from Altay to the west-to-east natural gas transmission project that extends to coastal China. An agreement on the western pipeline could be signed very soon, with near-final documents now with the Xinjiang Transportation Bureau and local government for approval, said the Chinese media report that was quoted by the AFX. In a separate report, Shanghai Securities News said that the western pipeline would be the first of the two planned pipelines to begin operation, in 2010. It said that the western pipeline, linked to the more plentiful western Siberian gas reserves, will cover a distance of 2,800 kilometers and have a designed production capacity of 30 billion cubic meters a year. The second, eastern pipeline that will connect to Heilongjiang would be supplied by eastern Siberian gas fields. That pipeline should start operation in 2015, the report said. Russian-British giant THK-BP owns a 63 percent share of the giant Kovykta gas condensate field in eastern Siberia. It would like to start the development of this field as soon as possible, but Gazprom, which holds monopoly on all gas exports, says the development of Kovykta should not be started before 2015. Neither report gave financial details for the pipeline projects.