Chinese Name: 中亚天然气管道D线
Location: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and China
Type of Project: Energy
Project Developer(s): Sino-pipeline International Company Limited (subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation)
Main Contractor(s): n/a
Known Financiers: China Development Bank
Cost: 6.7 billion USD (estimated)
Project Status: Under construction
In its international energy policy, the Chinese authorities have been trying to avoid excessive dependence on a single supplier or a single transit country. With all currently functioning oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia passing through Kazakhstan, Line D will allow Beijing to bypass the Kazakh territory, thus enhancing its bargaining power vis-à-vis Kazakhstan. While part of the Central Asia–China Gas Pipelines, Line D is significantly different from the other three lines for at least two reasons. First, the gas supplied to China via Line D will be extracted from the Galkynish gas field, which happens to be the second-largest gas field in the world after South Pars in Iran. The other three lines extract from the gas fields at Amu Darya Right Banks in Turkmenistan. The development of Galkynish is an indicator of Beijing’s long-term strategic interests in extracting Turkmen gas. Second, Line D is not parallel to the already operational Line A, Line B, and Line C pipelines but follows an entirely different route that sidesteps Kazakhstan.
The groundwork for the new line was laid in 2013, when Beijing enticed Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik, and Kyrgyz authorities to sign agreements on building another major gas pipeline across Central Asia to deliver additional 30 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas from Turkmenistan to the southern and central parts of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China.
The total length of the pipeline is 966 kilometres, with 840 kilometres of it within Central Asia. The total cost of the project is estimated to be 6.7 billion USD. Unlike the other three lines that bypass Tajik and Kyrgyz territories, the two longest sections of Line D lie in Tajikistan (410 kilometres) and Kyrgyzstan (215 kilometres). Financial resources, qualified personnel, and equipment are primarily supplied by the Chinese side.
Because the Tajik section is the longest and the most challenging segment of the pipeline, in 2014 stakeholders decided to start the construction process from Tajikistan. Running the pipeline through Tajikistan’s mountain range will require the construction of 42 tunnels with a total length of 64 kilometres. In 2016, Uzbekistan’s national oil and gas company Uzbekneftegaz announced that construction was suspended due to technical reasons. Work partially resumed two years later, and in January 2020 a Chinese company contracted for the tunnel-digging reported completion of the first tunnel. No ultimate completion date has yet been announced by the stakeholders.
Akin to Lines A, B, and C, the legal underpinnings of Line D create a ‘national connected pipelines’ regime, where parties inked their rights and obligations regarding national pipeline sections under intergovernmental and host government (investor-state) agreements.
The ownership model is also mostly the same. The Uzbekistan and Tajikistan sections of Line D are operated through 50-50 joint ventures, Eastern Gas Pipeline LLP (EGP) and Trans-Tajik Gas Pipeline Co. Ltd. (TTGP), respectively. The only exception to the pattern is Kyrgyzstan, where China National Petroleum Corporation’s (CNPC) subsidiary SINO-Pipeline International Company Ltd. established Trans-Kyrgyz Gas Pipeline International Co. Ltd. (TKGP) for the construction and operation of the pipeline. While Kyrgyzstan’s Government authorised its regulator, State Committee on Energy, Industry, and Subsoil, to monitor and assist TKGP’s activities, ownership of the pipeline as well as operation rights are vested solely with the CNPC, its subsidiaries, and affiliated companies, as articulated in Art. 5 of the China–Kyrgyzstan intergovernmental agreement.
Agreements:
7 February 2023: The profile has been extensively revised and updated to include information about the legal agreements that underpin the pipelines; an additional point about ‘opaqueness’ has been included in the project impacts. Olesya Dovgalyuk has been added as co-author.
Our content is published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Map based on OpenStreetMap developed by QualityFind. Illustrations | Anna Formilan. Logo | Krea.
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