China's huge West-to-East Natural Gas Pipeline project has started full operation on National Day morning when both the Tarim and Changqing gas fields in the western Xinjiang and Shaanxi jointly pumped gas to Shanghai, the country's economic center.

At 9:00 a.m. Friday morning, PetroChina president Jiang Jiemin pushed the button at a gas compression station at Jingbian in northwest China's Shaanxi Province to launch valves of both the western and eastern sections of the gas pipeline spanning over 4,000 kilometers, indicating full gas transmission of the pipeline project.

Construction of the gas pipeline project began on July 4, 2002, with an investment exceeding 140 billion yuan (16.9 billion US dollars). The gas pipeline is expected to transmit 12 billion cubic meters of gas a year, running through Xinjiang, Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu, Shanghai and Zhejiang.

The eastern section of the gas pipeline project, linking Shaanxi and Shanghai, was completed and started trial operations in October 2003, which has cumulatively supplied 700 million cubic meters of gas to 21 gas users in the eastern part of the country.

The western section from Lunnan of Xinjiang to Jingbian in Shaanxi started gas transmission Sept. 6 this year.

Upon full operation of the gas pipeline, the Tarim Basin gas field in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region will replace Changqing gas field in Shaanxi Province as the main gas source on Dec.1 this year. By Jan. 1, 2005, the whole gas pipeline will start commercial gas supply, said Jiang.

By pumping natural gas from the gas-rich west to the energy-thirsty east, the gas project will achieve a win-win result for both the west and east of the country, which is also a great move to boost development of the vast western part of the country, said the PetroChina president.

Under growing demand for energy, east China is a huge potential market for natural gas, which buys 85 percent of its energy from elsewhere. Gas demand for this region is expected to reach 10.5 billion cubic meters in 2005 and 20 billion cubic meters in 2010, experts from PetroChina predicted.

China became the second largest energy consumption country only next to the United States in 2003. The completion of the gas pipeline project will effectively ease the growing pressure of China's energy demand, the experts added.

It is estimated that by 2010, China's gas demand will reach 90 billion cubic meters, six percent of the country's total energy demand, and the percentage will rise to 10 in 2010 when China's gas demand will reach 200 billion cubic meters.

The completion and operation of the gas pipeline project will increase China's gas yield by 50 percent and increase the gas consumption in China's energy consumption structure by one to two percentage points, said the experts.