SHANGHAI, Aug 25 (AFP) - China and Kazakhstan are mulling construction of a multi-billion dollar natural gas pipeline from the Central Asian nation to China's western Xinjiang Autonomous Region, state press reported Wednesday.
If built it would link with China's West to East pipeline which will pump 12 billion cubic metres of natural gas from the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang to Shanghai, some 4,000 kilometres (2,400 miles) away, the China Daily reported.
The Sino-Kazak trunk would give China access to gas fields in western Central Asia as a back-up to the West to East line and is considered a further step toward meeting the country's long-term energy needs, the newspaper said.
China and Kazakhstan earlier this year agreed to a seperate three-billion-dollar deal to build the second-phase of a 3,000-kilometre (1,860-mile) oil pipeline.
It is expected to eventually pump 20 million tonnes of crude oil to western China.
The Sino-Kazak gas pipeline would also cost billions of dollars although the exact price tag is not known.
In the long term, the pipeline may extend further west towards Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and may be connected with grid conduits in Russia and Iran, creating a pan-Asian global energy bridge, the paper said.
Plans on such a grand scale remain premature though and it is likely to take years to analyse the feasibility of such a project. The report said the project was first put forward several years ago but had made little progress.
For the time being, the Sino-Kazak portion is in the initial stages of a feasibility study on upstream resources and market demands.
"There are several potential routes and supplying gasfields under discussion," the newspaper quoted an unnamed PetroChina engineer as saying.
Major issues such financing, pricing, volume and whether regional gas reserves are large enough to sustain the project in the long-haul are major drawbacks that could lead it to be scrapped, the paper said.
Another concern among experts is that the operation of such a massive pipeline running thousands of miles across Central Asia to China could be too expensive.
The pipeline is part of the Chinese government's drive to triple natural gas consumption by 2010, as it tries to reduce its reliance on domestic coal and imported oil.