Moscow (AFP)
Russia inaugurates Monday the first of three major gas pipelines, intended to establish its position as the world's largest natural gas exporter, including for the first time joining China.
Beijing has become a strategic partner of Moscow to diversify its markets, still largely European, despite the tensions between Russia and the EU.
Russia does not abandon its usual customers, two new tubes, one to Germany and the other to Turkey, to be launched in the coming weeks to sustain supplies.
The pipeline "Power of Siberia" connects via over 2,000 km of pipes the deposits of eastern Siberia on the Chinese border. China must complete its portion in 2022-2023 to bring the gas to Shanghai.
In Moscow on Monday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Yucheng hailed one of the "projects of the centuries" of China-Russia cooperation. For the Russian head of state, it is neither more nor less "the largest construction project in the world".
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will participate by video conference in the inauguration of this gas pipeline which concretizes the Russian will of a rapprochement with Asia, vis-a-vis a West judged hostile.
It is accompanied by a huge gas supply contract to China, estimated at over $ 400 billion over 30 years, signed by Gazprom and the Chinese giant CNPC in May 2014.
The year 2014 is also Moscow's annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula, which provoked a shower of Western economic sanctions and an important cooling off of relations with Europe.
China is also a major partner of Russia in liquefied natural gas (LNG), via two giant projects of the Russian private group Novatek in the Arctic.
The new gas pipeline "is one of the most anticipated energy projects in Asia, with important implications for China's natural gas supply, LNG import demand in the region and Moscow's energy strategy in Asia", say analysts at S & P Global Platts in a note.
The cost of Power of Siberia was estimated by Gazprom at 55 billion dollars, for a capacity in 2022-2023 of 38 billion m3 per year, or 9.5% of the gas consumed in China.
So far, gas sales to Europe and Turkey have provided most of the profits of Gazprom, traditional customers of the heir to the Soviet Gas Ministry.
- Europe too -
Pragmatic, the state gas giant does not turn away from it and will launch in the next few weeks two more hits.
The German-Russian Nord Stream 2 is a second gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea bypassing Ukraine. This opponent of the Russians but Western allies, has in recent years presented a problem for the stability of the gas deliveries of the EU.
The project divides the European states, some denouncing the danger of too much dependence on Moscow and the abandonment of the Ukrainian friend.
In the end, Germany's Angela Merkel managed to impose the project, despite pressure from Donald Trump. And its commissioning will double deliveries of Russian gas to Northern Europe to 110 billion m3 per year.
To the south, in January another gas pipeline bypassed Ukraine, the Russian-Turkish one. TurkStream symbolizes the good understanding of Russia and Turkey, but also the growing tensions between Ankara and its allies in NATO, whether American or European.
Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be at the inauguration, illustrating again their rapprochement, already notable on the Syrian file, despite their different objectives.
© 2019 AFP