Kazakh - Chinese Oil Pipeline Begins Operations - BBC

[hatrack]

Kazakhstan and China have inaugurated a 1,000km-long (620-mile) oil pipeline to supply Kazakh oil to energy-hungry western China.

It is the first major export pipeline from the landlocked Central Asian republic which does not cross Russia.

It will eventually export oil to feed China's booming economy from huge reserves around the Caspian Sea. Kazakhstan wants to become one of the world's top oil exporters in the next decade or two.

EDIT

With the help of Western oil companies, Kazakhstan has doubled its production to more than a million barrels a day since the collapse of the Soviet Union. That puts it among the world's top 20 oil producers now, but Kazakhstan has ambitions to triple this amount in the next decade or two.


EDIT

Editor's note: 1 million bpd is about 500K barrels less than Prudhoe Bay during peak production years between 1980 and 1989.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4530426.stm

[Dead_Parrot]

1. The question would be...

Production can easily be cranked up once the revenue's flowing (million barrels per day x $60 = lots of cash) But what are the Kazak reserves? Big enough to start a scap over?

[hatrack]

2. Big, but not THAT big - lots of high-sulfur stuff, too

I'll have to scratch around for some links and such.

[Massacure]

3. China doesn't care much about sulfer.

Pollution means very little to the Chinese government.

[phantom power]

4. There used to be a lot of hope that developing nations would...

leapfrog our industrial-age mistakes. It's been rather sad to see how far the reality has fallen short of everyone's hopes. Some days it seems as though nobody ever learns from anybody else's mistakes.