CHINA'S oil and gas pipelines have been lengthened 62 percent to 48,000 kilometers in the past four years, the National Bureau of Statistics reported.
At the end of last year, China's oil pipelines totaled 24,136 kilometers in length, with transmission capacity up 59 percent over 2002 to 575.3 million tons a year. Gas transmission capacity surged 159 percent over 2002 to 94.2 billion cubic meters a year as the total length of gas pipelines rose 62.7 percent to 24,090 kilometers. China's first west-to-east gas pipeline, which went into operation in 2004, runs 4,000 kilometers and carries 1.2 billion cubic meters of gas annually to Shanghai from the Tarim Basin in northwestern China's Xinjiang. Capacity is expected to reach 1.7 billion cubic meters in 2008.