Russia's Natural Gas to Power Beijing, Tianjin

The Changling-Yongqing section of the China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline, from Northeast China's Jilin province to North China's Hebei province, went into operation on Dec 3.

A milestone of PipeChina in pipeline construction, the operation heralded that clean natural gas from Russia is to arrive in the Beijing and the central part of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and is expected to help improve air quality in the Circum-Bohai Sea region, promote economic development in affected areas and optimize regional energy structure.

The pipeline section will effectively improve natural gas supply capacity by about 27 million cubic meters daily in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region by connecting to pipelines in North China, the pipeline network of Shaanxi and Gansu provinces and Ningxia Hui autonomous region, and gas depots in Dalian and the Liaohe River region of Liaoning province and Tangshan of Hebei.

The China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline is designed to wind through nine provincial regions in China. Its Heihe-Changling section from Northeast China's Heilongjiang province to Jilin started service in December 2019 and construction of the last section between Yongqing of Hebei and Shanghai began this July.

So far, nearly 4 billion cubic meters of natural gas has been safely and soundly transported from Russia through the China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline's sections already in operation.

Upon completion, the project is estimated to be capable of transporting 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually, benefiting a population of 400 million in affected areas.

According to PipeChina, the project is the country's first 1,422-millimeter ultra large diameter and 12 MPa high-pressure natural gas pipeline and an icon of China's third generation large-volume natural gas pipelines.

Digital and smart management has been used from construction to operation based on mobile terminals, cloud computing and big data technologies, making it an experimental smart project.

A view of the construction site of the Changling-Yongqing section of the China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]

(Executive editor: Wang Ruoting)