China has launched the construction of a national petroleum reserve base in northwest China's Gansu Province.
The reserve base, located in Yongdeng County of Lanzhou City, has a capacity of three million cubic meters, said an official with Lanzhou Petrochemical Company of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).
Construction of the project, which started Tuesday, is expected to cost around 2.38 billion yuan (about 350 million U.S. dollars), the official said.
The base mainly includes 30 oil tanks each with a capacity of 100,000 cubic meters. It is expected to be completed and put into use in the first half of 2011.
Construction of a repository for production and operation has also started in Lanzhou as a complementary part of the base. It is planned to be completed by October 2010.
