The energy landscape of China has drastically changed since China's first Pipeline Bureau delegation visited Calgary in 1974. Today China needs and wants high international standards for pipeline design, project financing, management, construction, commissioning, operations, maintenance, and the myriad of pipeline related activities.
And the need for the latest technology is driven by these developments:
- Jiang Zemin, formerly China's president and now chairman of the State Military Commission, wants to quadruple China's gross domestic product to more than $4 trillion by 2020. In the past 13 years, China's annual GDP averaged 9.3%. Energy requirements are growing at a similar rate.
- Of China's top leaders, eight of nine are engineers; the ninth is a geologist. Technocrats are leading the country to new heights of economic growth and prosperity; they understand energy, technology, and the supply-demand issues of oil and natural gas.
- China's 16th Congress in late 2002 projected an increase in oil imports from the current 2 million b/d to 9.8 million b/d by 2020. Massive pipeline and utility systems are needed to move these volumes.
- The publication International Petroleum Economics stated that PetroChina has budgeted $200 billion RMB ($24 billion) for pipeline infrastructure in the next 10 years.
- China's West-to-East gas pipeline, a multi-billion dollar project, is under construction and will connect reserves in northwest China to growing markets in the east, some 4,000 km away. In addition, two LNG terminals on the South Coast of China are in the planning and design stages and will provide LNG from Australia and Indonesia to the industrial coastal regions near Hong Kong.
- China's entry into WTO, hosting of the 2008 Winter Olympics in Beijing, and the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai provide added incentive to demonstrate that natural gas is replacing coal as the preferred fuel. In January 2003 in Beijing during one of the coldest weeks on record, the downtown sky was nonetheless clear and blue, evidence that the policy of using natural gas to reduce environmental pollution in this region is working.
- China's natural gas industry policymakers' goal is to have a production, transportation, and distribution infrastructure comparable to the Canadian natural gas experience all in the next decade. In short, China wants to accomplish in 10 years what it took Canada 50 years to build.
- The keen interest to learn the latest natural gas technology through seminars is further evidence of China embracing this industry. Since March 2002, four seminars have been held through the China National Petroleum Corp.-Alberta Petroleum Center (CAPC), an organization based in Beijing and funded by China National Petroleum Corp. and the government of Alberta. A continuing series of CAPC seminars in China and Canada is planned to share experience among leading pipeline specialists from Canada and the US.