BEIJING - Chinese workers have finished construction on the infrastructure for the major line of China's second west-east natural gas transmission pipeline, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the project's contractor, announced Monday.

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Repeated tests on the main line of this massive gas transmission project should be conducted before it is put into service from late June, said a CNPC spokesman.

By then, the pipeline project will carry natural gas from Turkmenistan and northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas, the country's two economically developed regions.

It will be China's first natural gas pipeline to transmit gas from a foreign country.

According to designs, the second west-east pipeline project, with a combined length of 8,653 kilometers and built in two parts - the western and eastern - will pass through 15 Chinese regions. The project will consist of eight sub-lines and one major line which will extend 4,865 km and run from Khorgos in Xinjiang to Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province.

Workers began construction on the western section of the pipeline project in February 2008 and on the eastern part one year later.

With a budget of 142.2 billion yuan (about $21.88 billion), the entire second west-east pipeline project has the capacity to transmit 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually with a minimum lifespan of 30 years, with 400 million people in China set to benefit from it.

Experts said the project will improve China's energy consumption structure by increasing natural gas use. The project is expected to save 76.8 million tonnes of coal from being burned, which would help cut emissions, including reduced discharging of 130 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and 1.44 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide.

The first West-East pipeline, which pipes gas from the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang to Shanghai, transmits 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually.