Russia’s new Power of Siberia-2 pipeline project to increase natural gas supplies to China has long been on hold.<\/p>\n
According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), Mongolia, the country through which the 2,500-kilometre pipeline will run, has not included the pipeline in its national development plan until 2028.<\/p>\n
Russia had offered Mongolia to buy gas from the pipeline, which has a capacity of 50 billion cubic metres a year, in addition to transit revenues.<\/p>\n
But former Mongolian Security Council member Munhnara Bayarlhavga told the SCMP that Moscow had failed to reach an agreement with Beijing.<\/p>\n
We are entering a long pause as Moscow no longer believes it can get the deal it wants from Beijing, and the project is likely to be shelved until better times,” Bayarlhavga said.<\/p>\n
In recent years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that Gazprom should increase its gas purchases to 100 billion cubic metres a year to replace the lost European market.<\/p>\n
Despite Putin’s visits to Beijing, the Chinese president has not approved the construction.<\/p>\n
According to the Financial Times (FT), the stumbling block was the price of gas. China demanded that the price of gas be reduced to local levels, around $60 per thousand cubic metres. This is four times cheaper than the current cost of Russian gas to China.<\/p>\n
Late last year, Moscow claimed that the Power of Siberia-2 project was at a high level of readiness and that design contracts would be approved in the first quarter of 2024. After that, we can start construction,’ said then Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko.<\/p>\n
Mongolia was expecting an influx of investment from the construction of the gas pipeline, estimated to cost between $8 billion and $15 billion, but Li Lifan, an expert at the Shanghai Academy of Social Studies, said: ‘Russia has no money and China is in no hurry to build it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia’s new Power of Siberia-2 pipeline project to increase natural gas supplies to China has long been on hold. According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), Mongolia, the country through which the 2,500-kilometre pipeline will run, has not included the pipeline in its national development plan until 2028. Russia had offered Mongolia to buy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[529,704,2838,971,2837,683],"class_list":["post-5171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","tag-china","tag-gas","tag-mongolia","tag-moscow","tag-power-of-siberia-2","tag-russia"],"yoast_head":"\n