Gas started pumping through the huge West-to-East Natural Gas Pipeline on Friday, sending gas from the Tarim and Changqing gas fields in western Xinjiang and Shaanxi Provinces to Shanghai.

At 9:00 am on National Day, PetroChina President Jiang Jiemin pushed a button at a gas compression station at Jingbian in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province to launch the 4,000-kilometre-long pipeline.

Construction of the pipeline began on July 4, 2002 and cost more than 140 billion yuan (US$16.9 billion). It will transmit 12 billion cubic metres of gas a year.

(China Daily October 2, 2004)