An 800-kilometre gas pipeline in northern Myanmar has sprung leaks, community groups said Thursday, raising further safety and environmental concerns over the $2 billion project. "Even when they tested the pipeline with water, it leaked in many places," said Sai Myo Aung, joint-secretery of the Ta-aung Student and Youth Union, a local ethnic organization in Shan State. "The residents nearby are seriously afraid and they want to know how the condition of the pipeline will be when the gas is sent through it," she said in a telephone interview.

Leakages in the pipeline built by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) were reported twice in 2012 and twice in 2013, said the organisation's Lwee Kwe. Construction on the natural gas pipeline began in 2009 in the western state of Rakhine, and is scheduled to finish in May in Yunnan, China. It will deliver natural gas from Daewoo International's offshore reserves in the Bay of Bengal to China. Complaints of lack of proper environmental impact studies and inadequate compensation have dogged the venture, signed in 2009 when Myanmar was still under military rule. "Holes that have appeared in the pipeline have been fixed with flimsy rubber patches, unlikely to withstand the pressure of billions of cubic meters of gas and no information on the risks have been given to local communities," the Northern Shan Farmers' Committee said in a statement on April 5.

In Yangon, CNPC said it knew nothing of the test runs. "We have heard nothing about it," said Chan Wei, spokesman of the CNPC Yangon office. "The pipeline was constructed to be safe in line with the international standards but we will ask the field engineers if there is any such event is happened."