Aug 26 (Reuters) - Annual capacity of central Asia gas pipelines, which mainly pump gas to China, will almost double by 2015 from an expected 30 billion cubic metres in 2012, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) reported in a company newspaper on Friday.

The current pipelines, which span nearly 2,000 kilometres in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan before entering China's northwestern Xinjiang region, have shipped 13.68 bcm of gas to China as of early Thursday, China Petroleum Daily said.

The pipelines started sending gas to China in late 2009.

Central Asia Gas Co, a CNPC unit in charge of building and operating gas pipelines in the central Asia countries through joint ventures with local companies, will start laying two new pipelines this year and put them into operation by 2013.

The company has set a goal of running nearly 7,000 km of gas pipelines through central Asian countries with 55-60 bcm of annual transportation capacity by 2015, the newspaper report said.

Source:reuters