Photo: CNS

 The China-Russia east route natural gas pipeline project has delivered a total of 10 billion cubic meters of imported Russian gas as of Wednesday, since gas imports started in December 2019, customs data showed.

The pipeline is scheduled to provide China with 10 billion cubic meters of Russian gas in 2021 and the amount is expected to increase to 38 billion cubic meters annually from 2024, according to the 30-year, $400 billion contract signed by Russian gas giant Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp in 2014.

Russian natural gas has been used in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, Beijing and Tianjin. The pipeline system is the largest long-distance intelligent natural gas transmission system in China, according to the Harbin customs in Heilongjiang. 

The full China-Russia east route is a pipeline system spanning more than 8,000 kilometers. It transmits natural gas from Siberia to nine provincial-level regions in China. 

It has been divided into three sections: the northern section from Heilongjiang's Heihe to Changling in Northeast China's Jilin Province, the middle section from Changling to Yongqing in North China's Hebei Province, and the southern section from Yongqing to East China's Shanghai. 

The northern section was put into use in December 2019 and the middle section in December 2020. The southern section is under construction and is expected to be completed and put into operation in 2025. By then, the daily gas transmission capacity will exceed 50 million cubic meters, nearly three times higher than the current capacity.

In 2020, China imported 101.6 million tons of natural gas, of which nearly 8 percent came from Russia, customs data showed.

China imported natural gas from 24 countries last year. The top five sources of imported pipeline gas are Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Myanmar and Russia, according to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce.

Global Times