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Kazakhstan to Export Oil to China in 2006

Posted on: Tuesday, 13 December 2005, 12:00 CST

Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Astana, 13 December: The Atasu-Alashankou oil pipeline connecting western Kazakhstan with China's east will start operation in the middle of 2006 and the completion of the pipeline is planned for the end of 2005.

"We are planning that the pipeline will start to work fully in the middle of the next year," Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Vladimir Shkolnik told journalists in Astana today, Prime-TASS news agency reports.

"The construction work is being completed now, after which the pipeline will be filled with oil." The pipeline must be filled with 600,000 tonnes of oil. Shkolnik noted that the Chinese side is responsible for filling the pipeline.

The construction of the pipeline started in September 2004. Its planned flow capacity will amount to 20m tonnes a year, including the first stage of the pipeline with the capacity of 10m tonnes a year. This project is being run jointly by CNPC [Chinese National Petroleum Corporation] and KazMunayGaz [national oil and gas company].

The oil from Kazakhstan will be refined at Dushanzi oil refinery in China's Xinjiang-Uygur autonomous region bordering Kazakhstan. An ethylene production unit with the capacity of 10m tonnes a year was built at this plant in August 2005.

The Atasu-Alashankou pipeline is the second stage of the Kazakhstan-China interstate oil transport project. [The first part of the project], the Kenkiyak-Atyrau pipeline with initial annual capacity of 6m tonnes was commissioned in the spring 2003. This pipeline will form the first leg of the pipeline running from Kazakhstan to China if used in reverse. As is planned, the future Kenkiyak-Atyrau pipeline which will deliver oil from Kazakhstan to the Chinese border will become the third and final stage of the project.

Source: BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

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