THE last joint of the China-Russia East Route Natural Gas Pipeline, spanning over 8,000 kilometers from the gas fields of eastern Siberia to Shanghai, was welded Monday in Haimen, eastern Jiangsu Province, marking the completion of a major energy conduit to East China. Initiated in May 2014, this project aims to build the world’s longest gas pipeline, with China entering a 30-year agreement with Russia for natural gas imports. Construction involved cutting-edge technologies, featuring steel pipes with a diameter of 1.42 meters capable of withstanding 12-MPa extremely high pressure. Currently in the final stages of preparation for commissioning, the pipeline will be fully operational soon, said PipeChina, the State-owned enterprise overseeing China’s gas and oil pipeline system. Once fully operating, the gas pipeline will supply 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year, enough to meet the yearly gas demand of 130 million urban households, to the northeastern provinces of Jilin, Heilongjiang and Liaoning, as well as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta and other eastern parts of the country, the Beijing-based company said. The China-Russia East Route Natural Gas Pipeline enters China at Heihe in northeastern Heilongjiang Province from Blagoveshchensk. It runs for 3,000 km across Russia and for 5,111 km across China. Some 1,740 km of existing pipelines were used and 3,371 km of new pipelines were built. The total steel consumption is equivalent to that of 280 Eiffel towers. The pipeline was built in three stages, namely the northern section, the middle section and the southern section. The northern and middle sections were put into operation in 2019 and 2020 respectively. The southern section, stretching 1,509 km from north to south through Hebei, Shandong and Jiangsu provinces to Shanghai, began construction in 2020 and is expected to be operational by the end of this year. To date, the China-Russia East Route Natural Gas Pipeline has transported over 78 billion cubic meters of natural gas.(SD-Agencies) | 