By KUNA
Tokyo : Construction of the oil pipeline from Myanmar to southwest China’s Yunnan Province is still under discussion, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported Monday, citing a top provincial official. The long-awaited pipeline is expected to provide an alternative route for China’s crude imports from the Middle East and Africa and ease the country’s worries of its over-dependence on energy transportation through the Strait of Malacca.
“Whether, when and how to build it are yet to be decided,” Bai Enpei, secretary of the Yunnan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, said. “We are still studying the plan and discussing it with Myanmar, but many technical problems remain to be solved, which requires time,” said Bai, who is attending the ongoing annual session of the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, in Beijing. The plan of the oil pipeline, linking Myanmar’s deep-water port of Sittwe with Yunnan provincial capital Kunming, was approved last April by China’s National Development and Reform Commission, the nation’s top economic planning agency.
China, the world’s second-biggest oil consumer after the US, imported a new record at 163.17 million tons of crude oil last year, up 12.4 percent from the previous year, according to the customs data. Saudi Arabia was China’s biggest supplier of crude oil, with shipments from the kingdom reaching 26.33 million tons in 2007, followed by Angola 25 million tons and Iran with 20.54 million tons, respectively.