Some 42,000 tonnes of crude oil had as of 5:48 a.m. Sunday flowed through an oil pipeline linking Russia's far east and northeast China, 24 hours after the pipeline began operating, a spokesman for the Chinese operator of the pipeline said.

The pipeline, which originates in the Russian town of Skovorodino in the far-eastern Amur region, enters China at Mohe and terminates at northeast China's Daqing City.

A total of 1.32 million tonnes of oil is scheduled to be transported to China through the pipeline in January, said a spokesman for Pipeline Branch of Petro China Co., Ltd. (PBPC), the operator of the Chinese section of the pipeline.

The 1,000-km-long pipeline will transport 15 million tonnes of crude oil from Russia to China per year from 2011 until 2030, according to an agreement signed between the two countries. Some 72 kilometers of the pipeline is in Russia while 927 km of it is in China.