China is accelerating the construction of a long-distance oil artery to deliver oil and gas resources in western China to energy-starved eastern areas.

The project includes a crude oil pipeline between Shanshan in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Lanzhou in Gansu Province, a finished-oil pipeline connecting Urumqi with Lanzhou, and the Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline, which links Atasu in Kazakhstan with Alataw Pass in Xinjiang.

At a symposium held in Urumqi Tuesday, Wang Yilin, deputy general manager of the China Oil and Gas Group Co., said construction of the Kazakhstan-China pipeline, with a length of 1,200 km, is scheduled to start in August this year and be completedby the end of 2005.

The 1,500-km Shanshan-Lanzhou pipeline has a designed annual oil transmission capacity of 10 million tons.

The Urumqi-Lanzhou pipeline, with a total length of 1,800 km, is to transport 8 million to 10 million tons of oil annually. Preparation on the pipeline is underway and the pipeline will be laid in the latter half of this year. It will be finished by 2006.

The oil project will link the oil pipelines in Xinjiang and Gansu into a whole network, which is connected to petrol-chemical enterprises in eastern and southwestern China.

Xinjiang has an estimated oil reserve of 20.9 billion tons, accounting for a quarter of the national total. By the end of 2003,2.7 billion of oil resources had been verified. The region produced 21.4 million tons of oil last year. Its output will climbto 35 million tons by 2010.