By Kyaw Ye Lynn
YANGON, Myanmar (AA) – A much-delayed Chinese crude pipeline project has begun operations in Myanmar following an agreement made during President Hitn Kyaw’s state visit to China, official media reports said on Tuesday.
The pipeline had been ready since 2014, but it faced a delayed start-up due to disagreement over taxation.
Myanmar and China have reached an agreement over the crude oil pipeline after years of delays, according to the state-owned Global News Light of Myanmar.
The report said the pipeline deal was signed by Myanmar’s Ambassador to China, Thit Lin Ohn, and Chinese National Petroleum Corporation Chairman Wang Yilin in the Chinese capital, Beijing, on Monday.
It added the agreement allows the Chinese corporation to import crude oil from the Middle East and Africa without shipping it through the Straits of Malacca and into the South China Sea.
An official at the Chinese company’s office in Myanmar’s former capital, Yangon, confirmed a tanker carrying crude oil from Turkey had been offloading at an oil port in the Made Island in western Rakhine state since Monday.
“The first oil tanker started offloading 140,000 tons of crude oil in Made Island,” he said in an email to Anadolu Agency on Tuesday. The source chose to stay anonymous since he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The oil pipeline starts in Made Island, extending as long as 771 kilometers (479 miles), and ends in China’s Yunnan Province.
A 793-kilometre (492-mile) gas pipeline, running in parallel with the oil pipeline, has been delivering natural gas from Myanmar’s offshore fields to southwest China since July 2013.
