Second west-east gas pipeline to be built by China National Petroleum

China National Petroleum Corp., the country's biggest onshore oil and gas producer, will begin building a second west-to-east natural gas pipeline in 2008, a state media report said Friday.

The pipeline will run 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles) from Xinjiang, an oil and gas-rich region in the northwest, to southern, industrialized Guangdong province, the Shanghai Securities News reported.

The pipeline will carry 30 billion cubic meters (1 trillion cubic feet) of gas a year and would be completed by 2010, the newspaper cited Xue Zhenkui, director of the China Petroleum Pipeline Scientific Research Institute, as saying.

CNPC already has a west-east gas pipeline running from Xinjiang to Shanghai. The two pipelines would be connected, forming the backbone of a 100 billion yuan (US$12.9 billion;EUR9.7 billion) national natural gas network, the report said.