On December 14, at the inauguration ceremony of the Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline held in the gas plant on the right bank of the Amu Darya River in Turkmenistan, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Uzbek President Islam Karimov turned on the flow of natural gas together.
In his speech, President Hu said that as a carrier of goodwill for friendship and mutual benefits, the Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline is a model of sincere solidarity and mutually beneficial cooperation of the four countries. In line with the principle of mutual complementarity, mutual benefit, equality and win-win cooperation, the four countries have actively carried out energy cooperation and achieved fruitful results. Hu said China is ready to advance energy collaboration with other three countries in an all-round way and to establish a long-term, stable, secured and reliable partnership of energy cooperation, while securing safety and efficiency in the pipeline''s operation.
The other three leaders expressed respectively that the completion of the pipeline opened up a greater prospect of economic cooperation of the four countries. The project has truly realized the balance of interests among energy exporters, transporters and consumers. The most significant point of the modern "Silk Road" lies in that neighbors in the region find more common interests and cooperative opportunities.
The Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline starts at Turkmenista-Uzbekistan border city Gedaim, running through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and ends at Horgos in China''s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region, where it is connected to the Second West-East Gas Pipeline. The Gas Pipeline has dual lines in parallel, each running for 1,833km. Construction of the Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline commenced in July, 2008, with the line A becoming operational in December, 2009. The sub-line is expected to be operational by the end of September, 2010. A delivery capacity of 30bcm/a will be reached by the end of 2011.