Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, July 16
By Huseyn Hasanov – Trend:
Since the commissioning the interstate pipeline to China in December 2009, more than 270 billion cubic meters of natural gas have been exported from Central Asia, Trend reports referring to China Daily, which in turn refers to data provided by PetroChina.
Turkmenistan provides more than 80 percent of the supply of fossil fuels.
The current capacity of the pipeline includes up to 55 billion cubic meters of gas. Currently, gas coming from Central Asia is supplied to 27 provinces, autonomous regions, major cities and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and serves more than 300 million inhabitants.
As is known, the Central Asia–China gas pipeline includes three parallel branches (A, B and C), the length of each of which is 1,830 kilometers. On the territory of China, the West-East gas pipeline with a length of about 10,000 kilometers is connected to them.
The Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline runs through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. It is planned to build the fourth line of the gas pipeline - through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, with the commissioning of which the gas export volume will increase. In addition, it is planned to increase the gas supply volume to 65 bcm a year, which is more than 1.5 times than the current figures.
According to the forecast of BP, in the next 20 years, the demand for gas in China will more than double. Gas supplies through pipelines in China account for about 40 percent of the total gas imports.