Russia’s attempts to conclude a major gas pipeline deal with China have run aground over what Moscow sees as Beijing’s unreasonable demands on price and supply levels, the Financial Times reported on Sunday citing three people familiar with the matter.
China had asked to pay close to Russia’s heavily subsidised domestic prices and would only commit to buying a small fraction of the pipeline’s planned annual capacity of 50 billion cubic metres of gas according to the report.
I mean, Russia doesn’t have a whole lot by way of alternative markets for pipeline natural gas, due to the invasion.
And Russia didn’t negotiate the deal prior to kicking off the war, when they had more leverage.
They kind of set themselves up for not getting very favorable terms.
EDIT: Not to mention drawing down the storage of their last customer and then cutting them off as leverage. That’s gonna impact the expected risks attached to Russian gas.
When they did a deal before, China was getting the gas below cost to Russia. ( https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/21/russia-30-year-400bn-gas-deal-china )
Putin is finding out that China doesn’t have allies, it has victims.
Russia will surely say no to China because only desperate states without a booming economy would agree on such terms.
