China's West-to-East Pipeline Throughput Hits 25 Bcm/Year

The newly-built natural gas capacity of the Tarim oilfield of PetroChina, China's largest oil and gas producer, has exceeded three billion cubic meters this year.

(photo: PetroChina)

Over the past 15 years, the supply of natural gas from the Tarim oilfield through the West-to-East gas pipeline has increased from 351 million cubic meters per year following it went into operation in 2004 to 25 billion cubic meters per year today, according to the PetroChina Tarim Oilfield Company.

Located in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Tarim Basin is the largest petroliferous basin in China and one of the most difficult to explore due to its harsh ground environment and complicated underground conditions.

So far this year, the Tarim oilfield has drilled 32 productive gas wells at the southern foot of the Tianshan Mountain, with each producing more than 300,000 cubic meters of natural gas per day.

"Since January, the daily output of the new wells is 10 million cubic meters, meaning about three billion output per year," said Sun Shupeng with the Kuqa management department of the production construction department of the oilfield.

At present, three gas fields with an annual production capacity of 24 billion cubic meters of natural gas have been built in the southern foot of the Tianshan Mountain. In addition, another 21 key exploration wells and 37 production capacity construction wells are being drilled, and nearly four billion cubic meters of natural gas capacity is expected to be added next year.

"The total exploration area in Kuqa is 28,000 square kilometers, where lies seven trillion square meters of natural gas resources. Next we will build an area of 30 billion natural gas. Together with the area in the basin and the southwestern part of Tarim, the natural gas production should be higher," said Yang Haijun, president of the Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development of PetroChina's Tarim oilfield.

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