China is studying the possibility of building another natural gas pipeline from the energy-rich West to the energy-thirsty East in the coming five years from 2006 to 2010, according to the Xinhua news service.

Still in feasibility research stage, there is no timetable yet for its construction, says a China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) official. But another official indicated that the diameter of the second pipeline would be larger than that of the first west-east gas pipeline, which would demand much higher cost that the investment of 46 billion yuan (5.7 billion U.S. dollars) for the recently completed 2,500-mi line. The first project to pipe natural gas from the west to the east was put into commercial operation at the end of 2004, starting from the Tarim Basin of Northwest China’s Xinjiang and arriving in East China’s Shanghai.