(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-02-20 15:57

PetroChina Co Ltd, the country's top oil and gas producer, said it plans to start construction this month on a 102-billion-yuan ($14.27 billion) west to east gas pipeline, its second such project.

The company will hold a ceremony in Beijing on Friday, a senior official with PetroChina's Planning and Engineering Institute said.

The 8,000-kilometer pipeline will begin at Huoerguosi in northwestern China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, linking south to the Pearl River region and extending to the Yangtze River in the east.

It will deliver gas from domestic fields as well as from central Asian states, connecting with the planned Central Asian gas pipeline.

The pipeline has annual designed capacity of 30 billion cubic meters and will enter operations in 2010.

In October 2004, PetroChina completed the first west-to-east natural gas pipeline from Lunnan Oilfield in the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, running 2,400 kilometers to Shanghai.