Nursultan Nazarbaev met on 2 April with Wu Yaowen, first vice president of the China National Petroleum Corporation to discuss, among other things, the construction of an oil pipeline from western Kazakhstan to China. Kazakhstan and China signed an agreement in 1997 to build that pipeline, of which a 500-kilometer segment has already been built in western Kazakhstan. A press release issued after the meeting quoted Wu as saying the capacity of the pipeline would be between 30 million-50 million tons per year. He was also quoted as saying that the Chinese government would like for the project to be accelerated. (Interfax-Kazakhstan)