Andrei Ivolgin: “Gas war” is close: the EU against Russia and China

Let’s recall, on November 9th, during the visit of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin to China on the eve of the APEC forum, a bilateral Russian-Chinese agreement on gas deliveries via the western route was signed. The Head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller,the Chairman of the CNPC’s Board of Directors, Zhou Jiping in the presence of the leaders of the two countries signed the framework agreement for the supply of natural gas via the Western route: it is about 30 billion cubic meters of gas per year, which will go from Russia to China from the West Siberian deposits via the Altai gas pipeline. The document, in particular, reflects the conditions such as the volume and terms of the deliveries, the level of “take or pay", the area of the point of the gas on the border. The framework agreement defines the schedule of work on the contract of gas sale, technical agreement and the intergovernmental agreement on the western route.

Omitting the details of the other Russian-Chinese gas mega-deal, I note that a special piquancy to this agreement was given by the fact that the supply of gas to China via the western route will be carried out from the same fields from which gas is carried out to Europe. And as the gas pipeline should be launched in 2019, i.e. in only four years, from that period Europe will completely lose the ability to blackmail Russia with the gas issue: "if you don’t like gas at the price of $500 - come on, goodbye".