China moved a step closer to securing a new source of gas supply on Friday when Kazakhstan finished building its segment of a pan-Central Asian gas pipeline designed to address China''s growing energy needs.

The pipeline is the first significant gas link connecting the former Soviet region with eastern markets while bypassing Russia. Russian gas monopoly Gazprom is currently the main buyer of Central Asian gas.

"The first gas will be shipped in late November 2009," said Beimbet Shayakhmetov, the head of Asian Gas Pipeline company, a joint venture set up by China and Kazakhstan to build the link.

"In 2010, we will transit about 4.5-5.0 billion cubic metres of gas from Turkmenistan," he told reporters as workers were welding the last pipe links at the construction site on the steppe near the country''s commercial hub of Almaty.

The Kazakh segment is part of a route that links Turkmenistan''s natural gas deposits with China via Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Other parts of the pipeline are yet to be completed.

Wang Dongjin, vice-president of Chinese state energy firm CNPC, said his company would fill the pipeline with gas from Amu Darya Right Bank area in Turkmenistan, where it operates under a production sharing agreement.

"At the moment ... another field, South Iolotan, is being developed," he told Reuters. "We will also ship gas from that field."