Deep-water port opens in China's Yangtze River Delta

NANJING, Oct. 28 (Chinese media) -- A deep-water port in east China's Jiangsu

Province opened to ships and traffic on Tuesday.

The Yangkou Port is built on a man-made island on the Yellow Sea and is

connected to the mainland by a 13-km vehicular bridge which is now open to

traffic.

So far, only one berth at the port is operational for ships weighing 10,000

tons or less.

Once construction on the rest of the project is complete, the port is

expected to help handle massive amounts of cargo flowing in the bustling Yangtze

River Delta region which sees more than 40percent of China's port transportation

volume, according to statistics from the Ministry of Transportation.

Based on the port's construction plan, it will be able to dock ocean-going

ships weighing 300,000 tons by 2013, said Yuan Xin'an,deputy head of the

management board of the Yangkou Development Zone.

The port will be able to accommodate heavy cargo such as containers, crude

oil, iron ore and LNG, according to the port's developer, the Yangkou Port

Development and Investment Co. Ltd.

Before the Yangkou Port, there was no major port on the 1,000-km coastline

between Shanghai and Lianyungang Port in Jiangsu.

PetroChina, China's largest oil producer, kicked off its liquefied natural

gas (LNG) receiving station project at the port in May, taking advantage of the

port's prospective transportation capacity.

Yuan said that the 8 billion yuan (1.2 billion U.S. dollars) LNG project is

scheduled to be completed by 2011. The station will have an annual handling

capacity of 3.5 million tons of LNG, making it an important energy backup source

for Shanghai and Nanjing, provincial capital of Jiangsu.