A pipeline supplying oil from Myanmar to China started a trial operation last week, according to Chinese state-run media.
The 771 kilometre (478 mile) pipeline will connect the world’s top crude buyer with Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, reducing China’s dependence on oil transported through the narrow Malacca straits.
Vice President U Nyan Tun, Chinese Ambassador to Myanmar Yang Houlan, Minister for Energy U Zay Ya Aung and General Manager of the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) Liao Yongyuan attended the opening ceremony in Yangon, Xinhua news agency reported.
CNPC and state-run Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), completed the pipeline in May last year after launching the project in June 2010. CNPC owns 50.9 percent of the project and MOGE the rest.
The pipeline, which starts from Maday Island in Kyaukphyu township, has transmission capacity of 22 million tonnes per year. Kyaukphyu is also seeing some other projects being implemented including 300,000-tonne crude oil wharf, working vessel wharf, 650,000 cubic-metre water tank, 38 km port channel and 1.2 million cubic-metre crude oil reservoir.
Another pipeline pumping natural gas, part of the China-Myanmar oil and gas pipeline project, which comprises of a crude oil pipeline and a gas pipeline, pumping natural gas more than 2,500 kilometres from western Myanmar to southwest China went fully operational in 2013.
As of January 25, the pipeline had transmitted 3.92 billion cubic-metres gas to China, offloading 147 million cubic-metres gas for Myanmar, according to Xinhua.
