Prueher: Exchanges help build trust
CULTURAL and educational co-operation between China and the United States helps build up trust between the two countries, Joseph Prueher, US Ambassador to China, said on Saturday.
Free flights to help orphans' treatment in US
FIVE orphaned Chinese children aged between one and four years old were sent to the United States for medical treatment on Saturday aboard an inaugural Shanghai-Detroit direct flight launched by Northwest Airlines.
More flights to take off from Pudong airport soon
MORE flights will take off from Pudong International Airport when Hongqiao Airport starts its refurbishment in mid-May.
Air pollution declined last week
SHANGHAI'S air quality improved last week from the previous week, according to a report from the Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Centre.
Law staff work hard to flight IPR violations
ALTHOUGH for most Chinese, intellectual property rights (IPR) is a fairly recent concept, Xie Chen, vice-president of the IPR Protection Tribunal at Municipal No 2 Intermediate People's Court, and his seven colleagues handle an average of 120 to 150 cases of IPR violations a year.
Help on the way
IT'S APRIL 5 and promptly at 9:30 am, a police car drives up to the gates of the Shanghai Juvenile Supervision and Education Centre. Three teenagers get out of the car and go through the iron gates.
It seems to come back to the future!
I COULDN'T believe my eyes when I arrived in Shanghai a month ago. I should explain my memories of the city were five years old!
Murderers of taxi driver given death sentence
TWO men who tortured a Songjiang District taxi driver to death and buried the corpse in a roadside ditch in East China's Anhui Province have been sentenced to death.
Whistle-stop tour of China's 1st railway
SHANGHAI now has efficient bus lines, metro lines, highways and bridges over the Huangpu River.
Moonlighting to make more money
IT'S 9:30 am, the first class has just ended in the university and there won't be any more lessons before 3:15 pm today.
Exploiting riches of the sea
By Chen Qide
FURTHER exploitation of oil and gas fields in the East China Sea is expected to provide more natural gas for cooking. China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) plans to invest about 400 million yuan ($48 million) in the exploration project this year. Fu Chengyu, executive vice-president of the corporation, said the money will be used to drill five wells. "If successful, the corporation will increase its investment." The corporation said the total exploration expenditure is expected to reach about 40 billion yuan ($4.8 billion) by the year 2010 in order to produce 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas annually. At present, the Pinghu oil and gas field has an annual capacity of only 400 million cubic metres of gas. The city began developing the field in the East China Sea in the early 1990s to solve consumer energy shortages. The field, considered to be the starting point for development of oil and gas by China in the East China Sea, has abundant reserves of natural gas. The 240-square-kilometre field was discovered by drilling Pinghu No 1 Well in 1983 and it is 365 kilometres away from Shanghai's Nanhui County. City leaders believe the fundamental solution to the energy shortage problem is use of the huge oil and gas resources in the sea. Shanghai has co-operated with China National Star Petroleum Corporation and CNOOC to initiate a project in the field in two parts. Though the first phase of the project is designed to provide 1.2 million cubic metres of natural gas daily, it is still not enough to meet the growing demand. "The East China region is in urgent need of energy to power its fast economic development," Fu said. The nation is launching a project to send natural gas from Northwest China's Xinjiang to coastal cities, which will lay 4,200 kilometres of pipes. "The huge project takes time but the East China region needs immediate gas," he said. The East China Sea has about 460,000 square kilometres of continental shelf which was formed by thick sediments deposited on the sea floor. This has created favourable conditions for rich oil and gas resources. Fu said the Xihu Depression in the East China Sea basin is an area rich in oil and gas resources. After 20 years of exploration, the corporation has drilled 28 wells accessing a reserve of 150 billion cubic metres of natural gas. "But the figure is only 7.5 per cent of the reserve of 2,000 billion cubic metres of natural gas experts believe exist," Fu said. "Foreign funds and technology will be sought to step up the exploration," said Luo Han, general manager of CNOOC's Donghai Corp. Co-operation with British Primeline Petroleum Corporation is under way in Wenzhou, in East China's Zhejiang Province, to explore oil and natural gas, he said.
Copyright 2000 by Shanghai Star. All rights reserved.