China Turns Back to Kazakhstan

China's policymakers have once more turned to Kazakhstan as a potential energy supplier for the coming decades, according to reports.

Kazakh Prime Minister Daniyal Akhmetov has ordered the country's state oil and gas company to draw up documents related to a 1,300 km pipeline to northwest China, which was first proposed in 1997 and later shelved.

"China is turning back to this issue again and trying to satisfy some of its most pressing, immediate needs for energy supplies," Fiona Hill, foreign policy and energy expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told RFA in a recent interview. "The oil or gas in Kazakhstan then comes back into play again, as a partner that has already been courted with preliminary agreements and some decisions made, but left on the shelf for a while."

The original pipeline plans were announced in 1997 by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which said it would invest $9.5 billion. While only a small portion of that investment ever materialized, Kazakhstan has now outlined steps to begin construction of the pipeline, that could begin pumping oil to western China by 2006. Work on the line from Atasu in central Kazakhstan is scheduled to begin in June.