With the annual winter heating season in northern China beginning, concerns over the country's natural gas supplies are rising again following severe shortages last year. Natural gas has never been a major energy source in China, where it accounted for only 3.9 percent of the total energy mix in 2009, far below the world average of 24 percent. China relies much more heavily on coal, which supplies more than 70 percent of the country's energy consumption. But the share of natural gas has been increasing rapidly in recent years, from 2.4 percent in 2000 to 3.9 percent in 2009, and Beijing anticipates boosting that share to 8.3 percent by 2015 to reduce the country's heavy dependence on coal and crude oil and increase the use of clean energy. This means the country's demand for natural gas could more than double in the next five years, with some estimates saying consumption could rise from 88.7 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2009 to 240 bcm in 2015. Accordingly, China is actively seeking natural gas imports. China has become a net importer of natural gas since 2006 and is now focusing on importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) from overseas and constructing domestic pipelines linked to natural gas suppliers in Central Asia. This will include the 1,833- kilometer Central Asia Pipeline, which passes through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and connects with the western section of China's West-East Gas Transmission Project II, as well as the 1,100-kilometer China-Myanmar oil and gas pipeline, which will run from the port of Kyaukpyu on Myanmar's west coast through the Chinese gateway border city of Ruili in Yunnan province and on to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan. It will separate into two pipelines at Anshun in Guizhou province, one 2,380-kilometer line for oil that will end in Chongqing municipality and one 2,806-kilometer line for gas that will end in Guangxi province. When completed in 2013, the latter pipeline will transport 12 bcm of natural gas annually from Myanmar to China's southern provinces.
