Gazprom exports to China via Power of Siberia gas pipeline reach full capacity

MOSCOW. Dec 2 (Interfax) - The Power of Siberia gas pipeline from Russia to China has reached full export capacity of 38 billion cubic meters per year, Gazprom said in a statement.

As agreed, daily supplies were ramped up on December 1, a month earlier than planned.

Gas supplies via the Power of Siberia pipeline will exceed Gazprom's contractual obligations for the year in 2024, Gazprom said.

"Gazprom has been supplying Russian pipeline gas to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline for five years. It supplies reliably, in the volumes that our partners need, even when the volumes exceed Gazprom's contractual obligations. We see the demand for Russian gas on the growing Chinese market and the important role that Russian gas plays in the stable energy supply of China's economy. Long-term contracts between Gazprom and CNPC [China National Petroleum Corporation] strengthen the good-neighborly relations between our countries. I am confident that mutually beneficial strategic cooperation in the gas sector will continue to develop dynamically for the benefit of Russia and China," Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller was quoted as saying.

Gazprom began supplying gas to China via the Power of Siberia gas pipeline in 2019 from the Chayandinskoye field in Yakutia. The Kovyktinskoye field in the Irkutsk Region was connected to the system in 2022.

The latest increase in daily deliveries will make Gazprom the largest supplier of pipeline gas to China, surpassing Turkmenistan with a lot of room to spare. Russia has long been the leading overall supplier of gas - pipeline gas plus gas in liquefied form - to China.

Gazprom also gave information on actual deliveries via the Power of Siberia according to the schedule for ramping up export capacity: in 2020 - 4.1 bcm, in 2021 - 10.39 bcm, in 2022 - 15.4 bcm, in 2023 - 22.73 bcm. The exports have regularly exceeded Gazprom's annual contractual obligations, it said.

A contractual volume of 30 bcm was envisaged for 2024 - in daily terms more than 86 million cubic meters. The new supply level corresponds to a daily volume of approximately 109 million cubic meters.

China has developed transportation and gas distribution capacity on its territory as production and transportation capacity in Russia has grown.

The Chinese trunk pipeline system receiving Russian gas diverges in three directions - northern, central and southern. The northern section runs from Heihe in Heilongjiang Province across the Amur River from Russia's Blagoveshchensk to Changling in Jilin Province and was put into operation in 2019; the central section from Changling to Yongqing in Hebei Province was commissioned in 2020. Construction of the southern section, from Yongqing to Shanghai, began in July 2020. Thus, gas is supplied to three provinces of northeastern China; to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region; and to the Yangtze River Delta region.