CNOOC Says Pipeline Between Dongfang and Haikou Operational

Through persistent hard work by builders for more than 260 days, CNOOC's first onshore long natural gas pipeline, from Dongfang to Haikou, via Yangpu in Hainan Province, finally achieved the objective of safely and successfully transporting the natural gas of Dongfang 1-1 gas field to Hainan Yangpu Economic Development Zone and Haikou City respectively on August 10 & 11, 2003. Thus far, the construction of the gas pipeline project from Dongfang to Haikou, via Yangpu in Hainan Province, has been basically completed. The building-up of the gas pipeline project will definitely play an important role in exploiting the abundant natural gas resource in the west of the South China Sea, promoting economic development in Hainan Province and realizing CNOOC's gas strategy of constructing China coastal natural gas trunk line.

The total investment for the gas line is more than 400 million RMB, and the total length of the gas line is 247 kilometers. The gas line passes through 8 cities and counties in the west of Hainan Province and Yangpu Economic Development Zone. After finishing the first-stage construction, the gas line could transport 800 million cubic meters natural gas per year, and will supply 700 million cubic meters gas to Yangpu Power Plant and other industrial users of Yangpu Economic Development Zone and 100 million cubic meters gas to Old City Development Zone and Haikou citizens.

The gas line has been constructed by CNOOC Pipeline Gas Transportation Co., Ltd, established through a joint investment of CNOOC Gas & Power Co., Ltd (70%) and Hainan Fuel Chemistry Co. (30%). The construction of the gas line was initiated on October 16, 2002. The onshore natural gas pipeline construction is characterized by many construction points and long lines, and its coverage is extensive and complicated; Moreover, it needs to traverse and cross over 24 places, such as the regions with serious soil and water loss, rivers, expressways, railways and so on with large construction difficulty and high technical requirements. All of these have resulted in a good many difficulties to this project construction. For this reason, CNOOC Pipeline Gas Transportation Co. has drawn widely experiences and lessons from onshore long gas line construction both at home and abroad and combining the specific and actual conditions of CNOOC and Hainan Province, hence originated a new method of both guaranteeing the pipeline construction quality and saving investment, guaranteeing construction progress, and obtained remarkable achievements as follows: the percentage of pass for line welding in the first time has reached 97.85%; the investment has greatly decreased compared with the budget; the construction progress has been completed more than two months earlier than that required by the contract.