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New gas deal between Russia and China is a<br />
good instrument for Beijing to receive the access<br />
to many attractive Russian assets while<br />
for Kremlin it is an attempt to show the<br />
existing alternative for energy partnership<br />
with the West.<br />
New gas deal between Russia and<br />
China is a good instrument for Beijing<br />
to receive the access to many<br />
attractive Russian assets while for<br />
Kremlin it is an attempt to show the<br />
existing alternative for energy partnership<br />
with the West.<br />
China is the side that receiving the<br />
most from the war between Ukraine<br />
and Russia and the clash in international<br />
relations that appeared during<br />
the conflict. After Russian aggression<br />
against Ukraine Moscow received<br />
the full scale sanctions from EU, US<br />
and many more others international<br />
players for rude violation of international<br />
law, human rights and a whole<br />
set of international treaties. Having<br />
no intention to solve the conflict and<br />
reduce the level of violence on the<br />
East of Ukraine Russian president<br />
Vladimir Putin decided to play the<br />
Eastern game with the attempt of<br />
tight cooperation with China. The<br />
prominent place of such special relations<br />
between Moscow and Beijing<br />
should have been the new gas deal.<br />
Signed in May <strong>2014</strong> and technically<br />
supported in October <strong>2014</strong> treaty<br />
between Russia and China about<br />
joint realization of project “Sila Sibiri<br />
(Power of Siberia)” instead of great<br />
turn to the East became the second<br />
role pipeline to China with unclear<br />
perspectives. According to the basic<br />
memorandum signed in May the<br />
contract was signed for 30 years<br />
with the price of 400 billions dollars.<br />
According to it Russia is supposed<br />
to export about 38 billions of cubic<br />
meters of gas annually to China. The<br />
first gas was supposed to come in<br />
2018. Now Russian side announces<br />
the delay of first gas export on 2020<br />
and the reduction of gas volume up<br />
to 5 Bcm at the beginning.<br />
The thing is that Russia now has no<br />
money to build this gas pipeline by<br />
itself. Loans in Western banks are<br />
now no longer available. Russia’s<br />
own financial abilities are vanishing<br />
due to the dynamic fall of oil price<br />
which is the main Russian export<br />
product. So the only possible donor<br />
is China.<br />
But Beijing is not in a big hurry to<br />
give money for the new gas pipeline.<br />
So far Russian gas is not being criti-<br />
133<br />
CASPIAN REPORT, FALL <strong>2014</strong>
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