Gazprom on Monday announces record deliveries from the Siberian Force gas pipeline to China
Russia’s Gazprom on Tuesday announced record daily deliveries to Beijing through the Force of Siberia gas pipeline, which crosses the Russian Far East towards northeast China, amid a full visit of Xi Jinping to Russia.
On Monday, Gazprom “delivered the requested volumes and set a new historical record for daily gas supplies to China,” Gazprom said in a statement. When asked by Agence France-Presse (AFP), specifically about the exact number of deliveries, the company replied that it “did not provide any additional information”. Another source inside Gazprom familiar with the matter told AFP that “the daily volumes shipped to China” are “commercial information” and that this is “not the case”. [seraient pas] revelation[és] “.
Russia has been seeking to increase its gas supplies to the Chinese economy, a major energy consumer, for several years, accelerating that move for a year following international sanctions against Russia. Last year, gas shipments to China via the Siberian Force pipeline reached an all-time high of 15.5 billion cubic meters. By 2025, Moscow wants to multiply its exports via this infrastructure by a factor of 2.5 to 38 billion cubic meters per year.
In an article published by the Kremlin on Sunday evening, Vladimir Putin qualified the gas pipeline as the “deal of the century”. In January, Russia exported 2.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) to China, according to Chinese customs, placing it at the top of the Asian giant’s export list. At the end of December, Vladimir Putin had started exploiting the Kovykta gas field, a huge field in Siberia that should make it possible to increase exports to China in the future.
Moscow and Beijing could soon complete the implementation of the gigantic Force of Siberia 2 project, a gas pipeline that will run from Russia through Mongolia to Xinjiang (northwest of China). It would have a capacity of 50 billion cubic meters transported each year, almost as much as Nord Stream (55 billion) in Europe before it was shut down following sabotage in September 2022.