OREANDA-NEWS. September 22, 2014. The groundbreaking ceremony for Tajikistan section of Line D of the Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline was held in Dushanbe, the country's capital city. Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Tajik counterpart Emomali Rahmon delivered speeches on the occasion respectively and unveiled the project jointly. A CNPC delegation headed by the company's Chairman Zhou Jiping was present at the ceremony.

Line D of the Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline, totaling 1,000km with 840km outside China, has a designed annual deliverability of 30 billion cubic meters. The pipeline will receive gas supply from the Galkynysh Gas Field in Turkmenistan, and be routed via Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to China, forming the Central Asia-China gas pipeline network together with Line A, Line B and Line C which were already operational. Through this gas pipeline network, energy cooperation between China and the five Central Asian countries will be put to a new level.

By the time Line D is put into operation, natural gas export from Central Asia to China will be boosted to 85bcm per year, a 30bcm increase from the current total amount of 55bcm per year. Additionally, construction and operation of Line D, with a total investment of billions of USD, will create tens of thousands of new jobs and surely promote the economic and social progress of the countries along the pipeline.

On the same day, in the presence of the heads of the two nations, CNPC signed two agreements with Tajik Ministry of Energy and Water Resources and Tajiktransgaz respectively on the construction and operation of the Tajikistan section of Line D of the Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline.