With relations between North Korea and China growing closer due to tensions between Washington and Beijing, Daily NK has obtained photographs of a construction site in China where work on a pipeline facility bringing oil to North Korea is underway. There is speculation that China is already preparing to expand support to North Korea with the relaxation of international sanctions on Pyongyang in mind.
According to a Daily NK source in China on Wednesday, pipeline-related construction work has been underway since June at a facility on the outskirts of Dandong, Liaoning Province.
If you look at a photograph of the site taken by the source, a makeshift fence runs alongside the pipeline pressure facility. Inside the fence, you can see pipe segments, sandbags, excavators and other signs of construction.
Daily NK received information in June that construction work to replace the pipeline had begun at the Dandong facility. However, with surveillance cameras installed around the facility and security tight, images proved difficult to obtain. After several attempts, the source was finally able to photograph the inside of the facility on July 29.
The Sino-North Korean oil pipeline, or PRC-DPRK Friendship Oil Pipeline, begins at an oil storage facility in Dandong, flows under the Yalu River and ends at Paengma-ri Petroleum Production Storage Facility in Pihyon County, North Pyongan Province.
As the pipeline — completed in 1975 — is old and deteriorated, it has long been criticized for excessive leaks and poor oil quality.
In particular, every time North Korea carries out a nuclear test, China has reduced the supply of oil through the pipeline as a warning, and with restrictions on oil exports to North Korea strengthening due to UN sanctions, Beijing has been sending just enough oil to prevent the pipeline from clogging. Accordingly, the pipeline is apparently in poor condition.
The oil China supplies to North Korea comes from Heilongjiang Province’s Daqing Oil Field, where the oil is high in paraffinic hydrocarbon and easily coagulates in low temperatures. Accordingly, the pipeline tends to clog unless the oil is heated.
China’s inability to completely shut the pipeline despite the UN Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 2375 and Resolution 2397, which placed limits on supplying oil products to North Korea after the country conducted its sixth nuclear test and test launched the Hwasong-15 ballistic missile, is reportedly due in part to Chinese fears that suspending oil shipments could render the pipeline completely inoperable.
Moreover, for China, the pipeline is a tool to both pacify and punish North Korea, as well as a card Beijing can play in its competition with the United States, allowing it to leverage North Korea. Accordingly, maintaining the pipeline makes good strategic sense for Beijing.
However, it will not be easy for China to expand its oil shipments to North Korea while international sanctions on Pyongyang are in place.
This is because China uses trains to transport oil from the Daqing Oil Field to the Dandong facility, where it is then shipped to North Korea by pipeline. Accordingly, the international community can ascertain how much oil has been shipped to the Dandong facility.
“It’s true that China is calling for an easing of sanctions on North Korea, with snapbacks, at the UNSC Sanctions Committee on North Korea, but it’s not easy for a permanent member of the Security Council like China to ignore sanctions and expand oil shipments to North Korea on its own,” said Park Jong-chul, a professor at South Korea’s Gyeongsang National University. “If China is doing construction work related to the pipeline to North Korea, we should see that as aimed at preparing for after sanctions are eased.”
This means we should not understand work on the pipeline, in and of itself, as evidence of expanded oil shipments by China to North Korea.
Another expert on North Korea, who requested to remain anonymous, said because China wants “hegemony based on its economic and military power,” it is wary of actions that could “shake its position in the international community.” He said that as a permanent member of the Security Council, China will avoid being the first to poke holes in sanctions on North Korea.
However, the expert said the pipeline is significant for China for several reasons. “The construction work on the pipeline sends a message of trust to North Korea, that China could provide the support North Korea needs at any time,” he said. “And to the United States, it shows that China holds the card of influence over North Korea.”
Meanwhile, as tensions between the United States and China worsen, Beijing is making repeated calls to ease sanctions on Pyongyang.
At the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) foreign ministers’ meeting on Aug. 6, Chinese Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the way to break the “current deadlock” was to quickly activate the reversible clause of the sanctions resolution (calling for conditional easing and snapbacks) to ease sanctions on the North and promote a positive atmosphere for the restart of dialogue.
