China to boost Central Asia energy ties

BEIJING - China will continue to expand energy ties with Central Asian countries, which have proven to be a fruitful model of mutually beneficial cooperation, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Thursday.

Zhang Hanhui, director-general of the Foreign Ministry's Department of European-Central Asian Affairs, said the Central Asian economy showed strong momentum last year with 7 percent growth in GDP, and cooperation between nations in the region and China has great potential to be upgraded to a new level.

Chinese energy enterprises have participated in oil and gas development in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, he said.

China and Turkmenistan signed agreements in July 2007 under which the Central Asian nation would supply 30 billion cubic meters of gas to China annually through pipelines for 30 years.

In November, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said that Turkmenistan plans to expand its natural gas supply to China to 65 billion cu m annually via pipelines.

The gas is shipped through the China-Central Asia pipeline, which originates in Turkmenistan and goes through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan before connecting with China's second west-east gas pipeline, which starts in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and ends in Hong Kong, with a total length of 8,704 km.