By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Sept. 2 -- PetroChina Co. Ltd., the domestic unit of China National Petroleum Corp. Ltd., awarded a contract to Weatherford International Ltd.'s Pipeline & Specialty Services (P&SS) unit for drying and precommissioning 500 km of the West-East natural gas pipeline in China.
The contract is the second P&SS has been awarded on the 3,900 km pipeline, which will run through eight provinces in China, crossing China's two largest rivers—the Yellow River and the Yangtze (see map, Mar. 17, 2003, p. 68).
The $24.1 billion pipeline will carry 12 billion cu m/year of natural gas from the Tarim basin in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the Changqing gas field in Shaanxi Province to eastern regions, including Shanghai, to become their main source of gas after January 2005.
Construction on the eastern section, linking Shaanxi and Shanghai, started in July 2002 and operations began in October 2003. PetroChina said in January that the pipeline had already delivered more than 70 million cu m of natural gas to East China's Zhejiang Province. Construction on the western section, from Lunnan, Xinjiang to Jingbian in Shaanxi, is slated for completion in early 2005.