Work starts on natural-gas station ( 2003-09-24 09:54) (China Daily)
Construction of a
7.4-billion-yuan receiving station of Guangdong's long-awaited LNG (liquefied
natural gas) network project started in Shenzhen Tuesday.
Covering an area of more than 40 hectares, the station has been designed to
reach a production capacity of more than 3.7 million tons a year.
The US$892-million project includes two large gas tanks, an LNG port and
natural gas transmission pipelines.
Each of the two gas tanks will reach a capacity of more than 160,000 cubic
metres.
A French company and an Italian firm have won the deal to build the project
via public biddings.
"Construction of the receiving station indicates that the province's LNG
project has formally begun," an official from Guangdong Provincial Development
and Planning Commission said yesterday.
The gas-receiving station will be completed and start receiving gas from
overseas in June of 2006, according to the official.
The 30-billion yuan (US$3.61 billion) LNG project consists of a pipeline
network of 509 kilometres and will be completed in five years.
The first phase of the project will be finished in the second half of 2006.
It will be able to provide gas to the cities of Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguan
and Foshan in the Pearl River Delta.
The whole project will be completed in 2008. It will be able to provide gas
to all major cities in the Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong.
World petroleum giant, British Petroleum (BP), has won the contract to build
the LNG project while Australia has clinched the deal to export natural gas to
Guangdong.
Guangdong, which can self-supply less than 10 per cent of the energy it
needs, will annually import more than three million tons of natural gas when the
LNG project is fully completed, the official said.
