China Okays Silk Road oil pipelines

China approves alternatives to shipping lanes as reported here:

The 1,800-km (1,118 mile) oil product pipeline and the 1,500-km (932 mile) crude pipeline, both connecting the northwestern Xinjiang region with neighbouring Gansu province, will cost a total of 14.6 billion yuan ($1.8 billion), the officials said.

They will eventually be linked up with an international crude pipeline from Kazakhstan, they said.

Most oil imports to China, the world's second largest crude consumer, are shipped from the often volatile Middle East through the narrow and at times piracy-plagued Malacca Straits and Beijing is keen to diversify supply routes.

The new pipelines will be built by state oil giant CNPC, parent of the Hong Kong and New York-listed PetroChina , which plans to start up the 20 million tonne-per-year (400,000 bpd) crude oil pipeline by August 2006.

The oil product pipe, designed to move 10 million tonnes of products a year from the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi, to the Gansu capital, Lanzhou, will be operational by the end of this year to match the start-up of the Kazakhstan pipeline, the officials said.

Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Korea must still rely on ships or cut some deals with the PRC, I guess.