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CNPC stepping up natural gas supply
By Wan Zhihong (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-20 08:08 China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country's largest oil and gas producer, yesterday said it is supplying record volumes of natural gas to meet rising demand triggered by falling temperatures. The company's daily gas supply has reached nearly 200 million cu m since November, as cold weather increases heating demand, it said in a statement on its website yesterday. Heating gas consumption in Beijing saw an increase of 9 million cu m from a year earlier on Nov 18, up by 57 percent. Gas consumption in northern China exceeded 60 million cu m, said the statement. The company's natural gas production and pipeline transmission have reached their maximum capacity, said the statement, citing Hou Chuangye, deputy general manager for gas and pipeline operations. China's natural gas production is increasing by 10 billion cu m annually in recent years. However, it is still hard to meet the rapid growth in consumption, according to CNPC.
At present over 400 million people in China use natural gas. The energy source accounts for around 4 percent of China's total energy. Analysts said China's natural gas consumption would continue to see rapid growth in the long run, which is in line with the government's policy to use more clean energy. CNPC is now building the country's second West-East gas pipeline, the largest of its kind in the world. The project, which has a total length of 9,102 km and 142.2 billion yuan ($20.83 billion) of investment, is expected to start operations by the end of this year. The pipeline will greatly boost natural gas consumption in China, Wu Hong, an executive with CNPC earlier told China Daily. "Once the project comes into operation, China will raise the ratio of natural gas in its total primary energy consumption by 1 to 2 percentage points." China plans to increase natural gas use to 5.3 percent of its total primary energy consumption in 2010. The country's natural gas production will be 120 billion cu m in 2011, rising by over 50 percent from last year, a three-year plan chalked out by the National Energy Administration NEA has outlined.
The country will also speed up construction of a series of oil and gas pipelines to increase transmission capacity, said the three-year blueprint for China's oil and gas industry. Several key projects, such as the China-Kazakhstan crude oil pipeline, the Lanzhou-Zhengzhou-Changsha refined oil pipeline, the China-Myanmar oil and gas pipeline and the Shaanxi-Beijing natural gas pipeline will get specific attention.
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