A groundbreaking ceremony for the commencement of construction on the 7,378 km Third West-East Gas Pipeline was recently held in Beijing, China. The pipeline project consists of one trunk line, eight branches, three gas storage facilities, and one LNG station.

The 5,220 km-long trunk line will start from Horgos in Xinjiang and end at Fuzhou in Fujian Province, crossing en route through ten provinces and regions including Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, and Guangdong. With designed pressure of 10-12 MPa and annual deliverability of 30 Bcm, the pipeline is expected to be completed in 2015, joining Line C of the Central Asia-China gas pipeline which is also currently under construction.

The Third West-East gas pipeline will transmit gas mainly from Central Asia and will utilise the incremental gas production in the Tarim Basin and coal gas in Xinjiang as supplementary gas source.

Completion of the project will further enhance gas supply in China, raising the share of natural gas in the country's primary energy consumption by over one percent, and meanwhile cutting annual emissions of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, and nitric oxide down by 130 MMt, 1.44 MMt, and 360,000 tons respectively.