China, Kazakhstan to Build Pipelines From Caspian Sea

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) — The leaders of China and Kazakhstan agreed to finance and build a network of pipelines to supply the world’s fastest-growing major economy with oil and gas from the Caspian Sea region.

“The Caspian will be linked to western China,” Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev told reporters in the capital Astana today after meeting with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao. “These are major projects and today we reached agreement on these issues.”
Kazakhstan’s Atasu-Alashankou oil route will be extended and a gas link from Turkmenistan to China through Kazakhstan will be built, Nazarbayev said. The gas link will bypass Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, landlocked countries between Turkmenistan’s Caspian shore and China.

China, the world’s second-largest energy user, is scouring the globe in search of energy supplies for its economy, which is expanding at an annual rate of 11.9 percent, the fastest pace in more than a dozen years. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are the biggest energy suppliers in the former Soviet Union after Russia. The Caspian region they share with Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia holds about 4 percent of the world’s proven oil and gas reserves.

Bloomberg