A Chinese worker from CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) shows a bottle of crude oil sampled from the oil pipe at the terminal of the China-R

A Chinese worker from CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) shows a bottle of crude oil sampled from the oil pipe at the terminal of the China-Russia oil pipeline in Daqing city, northeast Chinas Heilongjiang province, 20 December 2010. A flow of crude oil from Skovorodino in Russia arrived at Daqing terminal in Northeast China on Sunday (19 December 2010), in preparation for full operation of the China-Russia oil pipeline expected to start in weeks. According to the official website of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, the 300, 000 tons of crude oil was pumped from Russias Skovorodino station on December 12 and arrived at Daqing terminal on December 19. The 999-kilometer long oil pipeline, which is operated by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), is set to transport 15 million tons of crude oil annually from Russia to China for 20 years starting from January 1, 2011. In April 2009, construction began on 72-kilometers of pipeline in Russia and 927-kilometers in China. The transportation capacity of the pipeline could reach 30 million tons per year. The negotiations on a China-Russia oil pipeline can be traced back to 1994. But it was in February 2009 when the two countries signed an official agreement for the construction of a pipeline. Under the agreement, China will offer a total of US$25 billion in loans to two Russian oil companies, Rosneft and Transbeft, in exchange for 300 million tons of oil imports from Russia for 20 years.