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Oil pipeline starts commercial operation

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-07-12 14:01

Kazakhstan's crude oil output topped 50 million tons in 2002, the most recent time that data is available from here, and about 70 percent of its oil is exported.

With huge reserves in the Caspian Sea, insiders say the country's oil output will top 100 million tons by 2015.

The new oil shipping route will link Chinese consumers with the oil fields of the Caspian Sea, as well as alleviate China's excessive reliance on the Strait of Malacca, a traditional route for 80 percent of China's imported oil, said Yin.

Last year, China's crude oil import totaled 127 million tons, about 40 percent of its total consumption. About a half of China's oil import came from the Middle East and only 1.3 million tons was imported from Kazakhstan, via Alataw Pass, in 2005.

Insiders predict that the figure will climb to 4.75 million tons this year and to around 8 million tons in 2007. China and Kazakhstan started energy cooperation in 1997, marked by an intergovernmental agreement covering diverse means of collaboration in oil and gas fields, including an oil pipeline between western Kazakhstan and China's Xinjiang.

The transnational pipeline, extending 962.2 km from Atasu in Kazakhstan to the Alataw Pass of Xinjiang, was completed in November 2005 at the cost of 700 million U.S. dollars and China has also completed laying a 252-km oil pipeline between Alataw Pass to Dushanzi. China produced 182 million tons of crude oil in 2005, a figure experts say will climb up to 195 million tons by the end of 2010.

By then, the country's production demand and consumption will be hovering around 330 million tons and 350 million tons respectively, said Pan Derun, deputy chairman of the China.