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Due to rising energy demands amid rapid economic growth and the goal of reducing highly polluting coal in energy generation, China’s demand for oil and gas has soared since the early 1990s. China became a net importer of crude oil and natural gas in 1992 and 2007, respectively. In 2018, about 70 percent of the crude oil and more than 45 percent of the natural gas that China consumed was dependent on overseas imports (Wang et al. 2019). Such a high degree of external dependency challenges energy supply security, and China has made substantial efforts to build up energy infrastructure connecting it to energy-exporting regions at a scale that will help it secure a supply of oil and gas. Two key pillars of this effort are the China–Central Asia Pipelines (CCAP) and the China–Southeast Asia Pipelines (CSAP) megaprojects. Specifically, the CCAP refers to the China-Kazakhstan Oil Pipeline and the China–Central Asia Natural Gas Pipeline, while the CSAP refers to the China-Myanmar Oil Pipeline and the China-Myanmar Natural Gas Pipeline.
The CCAP includes a pipeline transporting oil from Kazakhstan to China, which has been fully operational since 2006. This pipeline, jointly funded by the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and KazMunayGas, was built as an extension of Kazakhstan’s extant domestic pipeline and designed to transport oil from Atyrau, a Caspian oil-producing city in Kazakhstan, through Kazakhstan’s domestic pipelines, and, finally, to the Chinese city of Alashankou on the Kazakh-stan-China border. The two stages of the China-Kazakhstan Oil Pipeline were completed in 2005 and 2009, respectively. By mid-2019, 126 million tons of crude oil had been transported through the pipeline to China (Xinhua 2019). The China–Central Asian Natural Gas Pipeline includes four stages. The first and second stages (Pipelines A and B) are situated in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and both connect to Turkmenistan’s domestic pipeline to receive natural gas from Turkmenistan and transport it to the Chinese city of Khorgos at the Kazazh border with Xinjiang. These stages have been in full operation since the end of 2009. The third stage (Pipeline C) is an extension of pipelines A and B and has been in operation since 2014. Combined, these three pipelines are capable of transporting 60 billion cubic meters (BCM) of natural gas to...