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Construction of a pipeline, part of China's giant project to transfer natural gas from the west to east, is under way in the coastal province of Zhejiang, in a strategic step to boost its already fast growing local economy.
The 35-km-long line from Huzhou to Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang, is expected to cost of 200 million yuan (24 million US dollars).
China started the massive project of transporting natural gas from resources-rich Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the northwest to Shanghai in the east in 2001.
During the first stage of the 120 billion yuan (14.45 billion US dollars) project, the 4,200-km-long pipeline will wind its way through eight autonomous regions and provinces, namely Xinjiang, Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu, before entering Shanghai.
Initially, 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas will be transported annually for industrial and domestic use in Shanghai and other Yangtze River Delta areas from gas fields of Tarim Basinin Xinjiang, one of China's largest oil and natural gas reserves with more than 200 cubic meters of proven natural gas reserves.
Zhejiang is one of the provinces in east China to benefit and it expects to receive natural gas from Xinjiang by the end of 2003.The prosperous province is also expecting natural gas piped from agas field in the East China Sea by the end of 2004.
(Xinhua News Agency January 6, 2003)
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