Gas pipeline mooted to link up RI and China
Gas pipeline mooted to link up RI and China
Reuters, Seoul
A group of businessmen brought together by the APEC trade
group plan an undersea gas pipeline from an Indonesian gas field
to Shanghai, a South Korean member of the group said on Monday.
Partnership for Equitable Growth (PEG), a non-profit company,
plans to build the 4,875 km (3,027 miles) pipeline from the
Natuna D-Alpha natural gas field in the South China Sea to
Shanghai, PEG chairman Kim Young-hoon said in a statement.
"We've been working on this project more than three years to
meet rapidly growing natural gas demand in China," Kim, the
president of South Korea's city gas association, told Reuters.
The proposed US$8 billion pipeline, which has yet to receive
official endorsement from China and Indonesia, would go via
Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand, he said.
The project, dubbed the Asian Gas Grid, would be a better
alternative than transporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) in
ships to meet Chinese gas needs, Kim said.
He said the project was endorsed in 1998 by the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, a trade and political body
grouping 21 Pacific-rim economies from Russia to Chile.
PEG was formed by six APEC members among businessmen from
APEC's business advisory council, ABAC.
ExxonMobil is the majority owner and operator of the D-Alpha
block situated in the Natuna Sea, which has estimated recoverable
reserves of some 46 trillion cubic feet.
The pipeline would be the longest undersea gas pipelines in
the world -- ahead of a 1,500 km (930 mile) gas pipeline from
Norway's Troll gas field to Belgium, PEG said.
Kim said around 30 percent of the $8 billion cost would be
raised by member businessmen and the rest through other funding.
They plan to complete the construction of the 1.2 metre wide
pipeline before the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
"I was motivated to lead the project in an effort to link the
pipe further to Korea, thus reducing Korea's 100 percent
dependency on LNG," Kim added.
Set up in 1999, PEG has four board members: Kim; Dr. Jeffrey
Koo, President of Chinatrust Commercial Bank of Taiwan; Tan Sri
Francis Yeoh, President of YTL Group of Malaysia; and Timothy
Ong, President of Asia Inc. Investments of Brunei.