Construction on a new branch of the Central Asia-China natural-gas
pipeline will start in September, helping to expand imports from
Turkmenistan, the National Energy Administration said Thursday.
China and Turkmenistan agreed to the branch, known as Line C,
last November. Under the deal, Turkmenistan will export an additional 25
billion cubic meters a year of natural gas to China, the NEA said in a
statement on its website, without specifying the time frame or who will
build the pipeline.
Turkmenistan has shipped a combined 33 billon cubic meters of
gas to China since the first branch of the Central Asia pipeline began
operating in December 2009, the NEA said.
Line C will be 1,840 kilometers long, starting at the
Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan border and passing through Kazakhstan
before reaching China's northwestern Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,
the state-controlled Xinhua news agency said Friday.
China's natural gas imports will exceed 45 billion cubic
meters in 2012, up 45% from a year earlier, China National Petroleum
Corp. said in June. In the first half of the year, imports from
Turkmenistan rose 57.8% to 7.2 million metric tons, or 9.86 billion
cubic meters, according to customs data.