Kazakhstan, Astana, Oct. 8 /Trend D.Mukhtarov/
The third branch of the Kazakhstan-China gas pipeline is planned to be commissioned in 2016, Chairman of the Board of JSC NC KazMunaiGas Sauat Mynbayev said on Tuesday at the VIII KAZENERGY Eurasian Forum.
"The Kazakhstan-China gas pipeline with a capacity of 30 billion cubic meters per year was commissioned in December last year. Today, over 63 billion cubic meters of gas is being transported to China through the two branches of this main pipeline. The construction of the third branch has been initiated and a full launch is planned for 2016," he said.
According to him, this will give an opportunity to additionally transporting 25 billion cubic meters of gas, five billion cubic meters of which are intended for Kazakh consumers in the country's southern regions.
"At the moment we are working on oil pipeline capacity. This will allow transferring them to a full design capacity in 2015-2018. In the case of the Chinese direction, it is 20 million tons which will allow transporting both our oil and Russian transit oil.
KazMunaiGas is also planning large scale investments in the expansion of the gas transport infrastructure. This will allow an increase of gas transit through the territory of our country and its consumption in the domestic market," Mynbayev said.
