BEIJING, Nov. 9, 2009 (Xinhua News Agency) -- The Turkmenistan Amur River natural gas project invested by PetroChina (PTR.NYSE; 0857.HK; 601857.SH)'s parent China National Petroleum Corporation, has put its first processing plant into operation, suggesting the project in Turkmenistan has been ready for supplying China with natural gas at the end of this November.

According to CNPC website, the Amur River project should annually supply China with more than five billion cubic meters of gas through PetroChina-run (PTR.NYSE; 0857.HK; 601857.SH) second West-to-East gas pipeline that runs from Amur River to the Chinese port city Horgos in Xinjiang and further extends to southeastern Guangdong province.

The pipeline is designed to annually supply 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas to China and is expected to ease the tight gas supply for the cities en route.

China is attempting to encourage the consumption of clean energies like natural gas to lessen the reliance on the dirty fossil fuels.

Under the encouragement, most of Chinese cities have seen their gas demand surge these years and it is forecasted that China's natural gas consumption by 2015 would exceed 100 billion cubic meters per year.

China's apparent consumption of natural gas in 2008 reached 85.93 billion cubic meters.