OREANDA-NEWS.  June 18, 2013. State-run China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has completed construction of a natural gas pipeline from Burma to China and is close to finishing an oil pipeline.

The pipelines are crucial strategic links which will allow China to bypass the Malacca Strait, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, and receive oil from the Middle East and Africa via the Indian Ocean and a port on Maday island, off the coast of Burma, Reuters reported.

"By May 28, the natural gas pipeline has completed construction and is ready for trial operation, while 94 percent of the crude oil pipeline project has finished and the operation of the oil pipeline is within control," the company said over the weekend in its in-house newspaper, China Petroleum Daily.

It didn't specify when the gas pipeline will start running.

Originally, the gas pipeline was due to start up at the end of May and the oil pipeline was set to begin operation in 2014.

The gas pipeline will bring gas from the Shwe fields off the coast of Rakhine, a western state bordering Bangladesh, to China's south-western Yunnan province.

But it could be delayed over security concerns as it runs across territories controlled by ethnic militia groups, Reuters quoted a Burma energy official as saying in May.

CNPC has completed six oil storage tanks on an island off western Burma from which the two pipelines will carry fuel to China, and will soon finish six more, the news agency also quoted an industry official as saying late last month.