Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, Nov. 25 / Trend H. Hasanov /
Turkmen gas was supplied to one of the most urbanised provinces of China, the Guangdong area, Turkmen media said on Friday.
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov attended the launching ceremony as part of his state visit to China (November 22-25).
He visited the city of Shenzhen, which is located in the south of Guangdong Province. It became the first special economic zone in China, created as part of the market reforms in 1980 for free trade and foreign investments.
The Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan-China gas pipeline was commissioned with help of four presidents in the middle of December 2009, the 'Neutral Turkmenistan' newspaper said. This project is the first multinational energy corridor for China designed to import foreign natural gas.
Starting in Turkmenistan in the west, the pipeline passes through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and crosses the Sino-Kazakh border near the town of Khorgos. There the main line is connected with the second branch of the West-East gas pipeline.
The first customer of the Turkmen gas in China on December 31, 2009 was Urumchi (the administrative centre of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region).
The second East-West line starts in Khorgos (Xinjiang), lying in the southern part of the country, which includes Shanghai, Guangdong and ends in Hong Kong. Its total length is 8700 km.
The new gas pipeline is now running through 15 Chinese provinces and will provide about 400 million people with natural fuel and solve a shortage of energy resources in this part of the country in the Pearl River Delta, the Vatan newspaper said.
This region is considered one of the most urbanised in the world. There are three major Chinese metropolises - Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong.