HANGZHOU - A 300,000-ton man-made waterway near east China's metropolis of Shanghai was completed on Saturday, which experts say will greatly reduce transport costs.

The eight-month project deepened a 15-km-long section of the Xiashimenkou waterway from 22 meters to 25 meters at the Ningbo-Zhoushan port in Zhejiang Province at a cost of 500 million yuan(US$ 68 million).

Only 150,000 to 200,000 ton vessels could pass through the section before.

The completion of the deepened channel can reduce the transport costs by about 2.1 U.S. dollars for per ton of imported crude oil if the capacity of a vessel from the Middle East is raised from 150,000 tons to 300,000 tons, experts say.

The Ningbo-Zhoushan Port is one of the country's biggest deep channels. Its cargo throughput was 424 million tons in 2006, accounting for 12 percent of the total of the country's coastal ports.