At 5pm on May 18, the heartening news arrived that CNPC''s service station in Wenchuan County, the epicenter of the Sichuan earthquake, had reopened. As a result, oil supplies have been completed restored to all of the quake-hit counties in the southwestern province.

Hundreds of CNPC enterprises and millions of its employees are currently engaged in a special battle to ensure oil supplies get through to help the quake survivors and help save lives.

In the Wenchuan earthquake, CNPC''s production and operations were also gravely affected, with many service stations suffering severe damage. To make matters even worse, operation of the Lanzhou-Chengdu-Chongqing Pipeline was suspended, which would have led to a serious shortage of oil products in quake-hit areas had it not been restarted on time.

Faced with a sharp increase in oil demand for disaster-relief activities, CNPC asked all its undamaged service stations to remain open around the clock. Service stations facing potential safety hazards were asked to ensure their continued operation by providing oil supplies in the open.

A "Green Passage" for oil supply was created by CNPC''s service stations along the route to quake-hit areas. In order to deal with the destruction of oil stores in the hardest-hit areas and the poor traffic conditions, CNPC sent hundreds of 1.5-ton tankers to deliver oil products directly to the quake-hit areas, alleviating the situation to a great extent.

The Lanzhou-Chengdu-Chongqing Pipeline restarted operations after 22 hours, and has reached the deliverability it had before the earthquake.

After more than 50 hours of urgent repairs, Nanchong Refining and Chemical Complex, which shut down all of its production facilities due to the disaster, restarted operations and produced qualified diesel in the early morning of May 15.

CNPC enterprises which suffered from the disaster basically restored themselves to normal production conditions after carrying out rescue operations. Based on the prerequisite of ensuring safety, all of CNPC''s refinery plants operated with a full-load capacity. Lanzhou Refinery will increase its processing capacity by 10 percent; Jinlin Petrochemical postponed equipment maintenance; and Jinzhou Petrochemical and Urumqi Petrochemical will increase their crude runs.

Like a blood transfusion, oil products assembled from different places were sent to quake-hit areas by rail, road, waterways and pipelines.

By 6pm on May 18, CNPC has sent 95,000 tons of oil products to Sichuan. In addition to Sinopec''s oil storage, a total of 200,000 tons of oil storage is adequate for current disaster relief. Oil products will continue to be promptly transported to the quake-hit areas in order to ensure stable market supplies.