China increasing natural gas import

China is increasing its natural gas import from central Asian countries. The Uzbek government plans to complete by the construction of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, China gas pipeline 2014. This is the third stage of the pipe which will be able to transport annually 55 bln cubic meters of Turkmen and Uzbek gas to China. The first stage of this pipeline started functioning on December 15, 2009, the second at the end of 2010.

Kazakh newspaper Respublika recently stated that, slowly, China is taking over in central Asia where once the Russians were dominant.