China Opens Pipeline To Import Gas From Myanmar
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China has started importing natural gas from Myanmar, a historic milestone as the world’s largest energy consumer continues to diversify its energy supply routes. While the pipelines are expected to provide only a small proportion of China’s energy needs, they are a vital energy security asset that will reduce Beijing’s reliance on shipping through the narrow choke-point of the Malacca Strait.
China has started importing natural gas from Myanmar, a historic milestone as the world’s largest energy consumer continues to diversify its energy supply routes. While the pipelines are expected to provide only a small proportion of China’s energy needs, they are a vital energy security asset that will reduce Beijing’s reliance on shipping through the narrow choke-point of the Malacca Strait.
The multibillion dollar 793-kilometre pipeline is part of the so-called Myanmar-China Oil and Gas Pipeline project and links the Myanmar port of Kuaykphyu with Southwest China’s Yunnan province.
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China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country’s top oil and gas producer, has majority ownership of the pipelines, and plans are underway to construct a parallel 771-kilometre pipeline that will carry oil originating from the Middle East and Africa.
According to Xinhua, the gas pipeline will be able to carry 12 billion cubic metres annually, while the crude oil pipeline has a capacity of 22 million tonnes per year.
While the pipelines are expected to provide only a small proportion of China’s total oil and gas needs, they are Beijing’s most strategically important investment in Myanmar, a vital energy security asset that will reduce Beijing’s reliance on shipping through the narrow choke-point of the Malacca Strait.
“In future China’s crude oil imports will not have to go through the Strait of Malacca. This has great strategic significance for China’s energy diversification and energy security. The supply of natural gas is equally important,” said Wang Dongjin, the new president of CNPC’s Hong Kong-listed subsidiary PetroChina.
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However, the pipelines, agreed to by Myanmar’s former military junta, have raised concerns in Myanmar’s civil society about whether its neighbour’s resource grab will benefit local people.
For years, China was the closest ally of Myanmar’s military regime, which was shunned by the West because of its poor human rights record and failure to hand power to an elected government. Since 2011, when an elected, though still military-backed, government took office, Myanmar has undergone political and economic reforms and has courted investment from the West.
China’s investments, largely in energy and mining, have however generated controversy in Myanmar because they have failed to relieve the country’s chronic power shortages. The pipelines have also been at the centre of protests by some communities in Myanmar who say they have not been adequately compensated for the land seizures. Human rights groups allege that the military, which has a history of human rights abuses, is helping to guard to pipeline in Myanmar.
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