The Horgos Compressor Station — a flagship station on China's West-East Gas Pipeline project in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region — recently surpassed a milestone by transporting over 500 billion cubic meters of natural gas, according to China Oil and Gas Pipeline Network Corp, China's largest energy infrastructure owner, also known as Pipe-China.

The project has supported the development of 27 provincial-level regions and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region through downstream services, and has met the energy demands of over 500 million residents, the company said on Tuesday.

The station is situated at a critical juncture of China's Belt and Road Initiative and represents a leading facility among the nation's west-east gas pipelines No 2 and 3. It is responsible for transporting natural gas from Central Asia and coal gas from the Ili Kazak autonomous prefecture to central and eastern regions of China.

With an annual transmission capacity of 60 billion cubic meters and a total power generation of 240 megawatts in its natural gas compressors, the station ranks first in Asia in terms of single-station installed capacity.

Power generated by the 500 billion-plus cubic meters of natural gas is equivalent to approximately 666 million metric tons of standard coal, and can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 731 million tons and dust emissions by 363 million tons.

"The environmental benefits resulting from the project are akin to afforesting about 2.27 billion hectares," the company said. "The station has improved the quality of the ecological environment along the pipeline and has advanced the nation's efforts to transform its energy structure to a green and low-carbon one."

Meanwhile, the station has also utilized waste heat from compressor units to build the country's first waste heat power generation initiative at a natural gas transmission station.