Putin, Xi launch ‘historic’ Russia-China gas pipeline
MOSCOW: Russia, the world’s top gas exporter, is planning to launch three major natural gas pipelines in the near future. Power of Siberia - Billed by Russian President Vladimir Putin as “the world’s biggest construction project,” the giant pipeline will send Siberian gas to China. The 3,000-kilometre pipeline runs from remote regions of eastern Siberia to the city of Blagoveshchensk on the Chinese border.
Gazprom is to supply the world’s fastest-growing market with 38 billion cubic meters of gas annually when the pipeline becomes fully operational in 2025. The 30-year, $400 billion deal was signed in 2014 after a decade of tortuous talks. It was the Russian gas giant’s biggest contract. The pipeline was built in extreme environmental conditions and runs through swampy, mountainous and permafrost areas.
Nord Stream 2
Despite years of tensions Europe currently remains Russia’s primary customer. The pipeline runs under the Baltic Sea and is set to double shipments of Russian natural gas to Germany, the EU’s biggest economy. It has an annual capacity is 55 billion cubic meters (bcm). Half of the 9.5-billion-euro ($10.6-billion) project is financed by Gazprom, with the rest covered by its European partners: Germany’s Wintershall and Uniper, Anglo-Dutch Shell, France’s Engie and Austria’s OMV. The project has been denounced by the United States and countries in eastern and central Europe, particularly Ukraine.
They fear it will increase Europe’s reliance on Russian energy supplies which Moscow could then use to exert political pressure. US President Donald Trump has threatened to hit Nord Stream 2 and those tied to it with sanctions. Russia had hoped to unveil the pipeline in late 2019 but the launch has been delayed due to difficulties in obtaining the permits from Denmark. In October, Copenhagen gave Russia a permit to build a section of the pipeline on the Danish continental shelf in the Baltic Sea. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak told reporters last month that he expected the pipeline to become operational in mid-2020.
TurkStream
Turkey is one of Russia’s key customers. Russia supplies gas to Turkey via the Blue Stream and TransBalkan gas pipelines. Running under the Black Sea, the new TurkStream pipeline consists of two lines-the first is intended for Turkish consumers, while the second will send gas to southern and southeastern Europe. Each has an annual capacity of 15.75 billion cubic meters. Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan hope to unveil the pipeline in January.
Like Nord Stream 2, it will bypass Ukraine. In comparison to the Power of Siberia and the Baltic energy link, the construction of the TurkStream pipeline benefited from a better climate. The project symbolizes close ties between NATO member Turkey and Russia which overcame a major rupture in 2015 following the downing of a Russian fighter jet. In 2016, after a meeting between Putin and Erdogan in Saint Petersburg earlier that year, Russia and Turkey signed an agreement to build the TurkStream pipeline. Construction began in 2017. — AFP