21-04-07

Construction of the China-Myanmar oil pipeline is expected to start this year. The long-awaited pipeline will provide an alternative route for China's crude imports from the Middle East and Africa.
The pipeline might ease China's worries of its over-dependence on energy transportation through the Strait of Malacca.

Earlier in April, the National Development and Reform Commission approved the Sino-Myanmar oil pipeline linking Myanmar's deep-water port of Sittwe with Kunming, capital of China's south-western Yunnan Province.
China will invest CNY 8 bn ($ 1.04 bn) to build a gas pipeline, which stretches 2,380 km, linking Myanmar with Kunming, it said. The pipeline will transport 170 bn cm of natural gas from the Middle East to southwest China in the next 30 years. Myanmar, in return, will get a loan of HKD 650 mm ($ 83 mm) from the Chinese government to tap its oil resources.

China's three state-owned oil producers have stepped up projects in Myanmar. In January, China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), the nation's largest oil producer, signed production sharing contracts with Myanmar's Ministry of Energy covering crude oil and natural gas exploration projects in three deep-water blocks off the western Myanmar coast.
The CNPC later launched a feasibility study with the Myanmar Oil and Gas.