China National Petroleum's Xinjiang-Lanzhou crude pipeline comes online

China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country's largest producer and supplier of crude oil, said its crude pipeline linking Shanshan in the northwestern Xinjiang region and Lanzhou in the northwestern province of Gansu began commercial operations at the end of June.

The 1,546-kilometer pipeline has a designed annual capacity of 20 mln tons, the company said in a statement.

Meanwhile, a 1,842-kilometer oil products pipeline along a similar route, which came online in July of last year, has a designed capacity of 10 mln tons per year.

State media earlier said that CNPC has spent 14.6 bln yuan on the oil pipelines project, including seven other subsidiary pipelines, in western China.

The two pipelines will eventually be connected to the China-Kazakhstan crude pipeline, which started delivering Kazakh oil in July 2006.

( 1 usd = 7.56 yuan )