China's West-East Gas Pipeline Project Sunday began supplying natural gas for east China's Zhejiang Province, after Shanghai, Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu, marking the start of the commercial operation of the pipeline project.

So far, it has provided more than 70 million cubic meters of gas to those areas, said PetroChina, which is in charge of the pipeline project.

Construction started in July 2002 and the project cost more than 200 billion yuan (US$24.1 billion).

It is designed to carry 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from the Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the Changqing gas field in Shaanxi to the eastern regions.

A total of 3,900 km of pipeline will be laid for the project.

The eastern section, linking Shaanxi and Shanghai, was completed and started trial operation in October 2003.

When the western section, from Lunnan of Xinjiang to Jingbian in Shaanxi, is completed, the Tarim Basin will replace Changqing as the main gas source on Jan. 1, 2005.

(People's Daily January 19, 2004)