Kazakhstan has begun to deliver oil to China by the oil pipeline going across Alatau to the oil storages, built in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, in the north-east of the country. So, the commercial operation of the first direct oil pipeline going across the Chinese border has been started, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Wednesday. According to Zhu Minjie, an officer of the Chinese customs service, within 15 days, after the filling up of the intermediary oil tank, oil will start coming to the oil refinery in Dushanzi, the biggest in China. The 962-kilometres-long oil pipeline connecting Atasu, Kazakhstan, and the Alatau crossing was built jointly by the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the Kazakhstan State Energy Company and the Kazgaz Company. It was put in operation last November. After that CNPC continued to build the next section of the pipeline, whose total length is 252 kilometres, and brought it to the Dushanzi oil refinery. The maximum design capacity of the oil pipeline is 20 million tons a year. China is expected to import this year 4.75 million tons of oil from Kazakhstan and to bring the figure to eight million tons in 2007. (Itar-Tass)