Source of West-East gas pipeline 

cctv.com 10-20-2005 15:47

Turning now to northwest China's Xinjiang, which boasts the country's largest reserves of oil and natural gas, more than 30 percent of the total. To tap into these riches, China has built an ambitious pipeline crossing all the way from the autonomous region to Shanghai on the East Coast. In today's edition of our special series of reports from Xinjiang, we go to the start of the pipeline in Tarim Basin.

This is the Kela 2 gasfield in Xinjiang's Tarim Basin. Discovered seven years ago, prospecting has shown nearly 230 billion cubic meters of exploitable gas reserves. With the completion of the West-East Pipeline last year, Kela 2 has started sending its gas to the east, currently at an annual rate of 700 million cubic meters. That means Kela is providing ninety percent of the pipeline's gas.

Huang Kun, Director of Kela Gas Exploration Team, Tarim Oilfield Co., said, "Each well yields 3.5 million cubic meters every day. This means, if each family has three members, we can provide 7 million families with their daily supply of gas. That's the same amount as the people of Beijing get through every day."

Once its pumped up from the ground, the natural gas is first purified. This is the "central processing factory" of the Kela 2 gasfield, the largest and most advanced of its type in Asia.

Before being sent off to Shanghai, the clean gas is pressurized at this station in Lunnan. Lunnan has the honor of being the first stop on the west-east pipeline.

Huang said, "If it weren't for Kela 2, there'd be no west-east gas project. But the gas wouldn't be able to get from west to east without these advanced technologies."

Commencing in 2002, the project took more than two years to complete. By the year 2007, the pipeline will be able to carry about 12 billion cubic meters of gas, benefiting more than 200 million people.

Editor:Chen Zhuo  Source:CCTV.com