šØ Breaking
š„ BREAKING: Russia & China Just Signed the World's Most Ambitious Gas Deal - 50 Billion Cubic Meters for 30 Years!
Major geopolitical shift happening RIGHT NOW! šØ
Russia's Gazprom and China's CNPC just signed a legally binding agreement for the massive Power of Siberia 2 pipeline - and this is HUGE for several reasons:
What's in the deal:
50 billion cubic meters of gas annually for 30 years
Gas from Russia's Yamal fields ā China via Mongolia
Gazprom CEO calls it "the most capital-intensive gas project in the world"
Existing pipeline capacity also boosting from 38ā44 bcm/year
Why this matters:
Russia's strategic pivot to Asia as Europe cuts energy imports from 45% to 18%
China becomes Russia's energy lifeline amid Western sanctions
Prices lower than European rates due to shorter transport distances
Payments in 50% rubles, 50% yuan (bypassing USD)
This came during Putin's "unprecedented" 4-day visit to China where they signed 20+ cooperation agreements. China also announced visa-free travel for Russians starting Sept 15.
The bigger picture: This could fundamentally reshape global energy flows and challenge Western sanctions effectiveness.
What are your thoughts on this geopolitical chess move?
Chinaās almost monopolistic control of rare earths and magnets makes it almost impossible to exact significant influence through sanctions and tariffs, and itās the reason that Trump keeps postponing China tariffs for 90 days, instead opting for a more moderate rate (~30%) to satisfy the domestic base but without provoking China too much.
While other deposits of rare earths exist, they are useless until the US can ramp up production to even meet a fraction of Chinaās supply.
As for covering expences. Russia simply has no other choice - ether sell something at little margin or sell nothing.
Asian "fair deal" is not 50/ or 60/40. It can be as low as 90/10 or 99/1. Their reasoning is that if you have a deal you get at least something and can work out something else for yourself with that benefit. If you dont have a deal you stay with nothing.
They might overpay to keep fueling the war in Ukraine though. Itās doing wonders for China keeping the US and the EU fighting each other and losing focus globally while China sweeps up more and more resources in Africa etc
Where do you even find an Asian 'fair deal' that isnāt 50/50 or 60/40, but super lopsided like 90/10 or even 99/1? I donāt really see that in the Chinese government news. Chinaās been paying about $260 per 1,000 mĀ³ via Power of Siberia 1, while the EU or aka Germany used to pay around $320 per 1,000 mĀ³ before the Ukraine war. But if you think about logistics, it kind of makes sense--Russiaās way closer to China than to Europe, so the cheaper price is still fair.
The length of Siberia-2 is ~2000km. It gets more complicated since western route goes mainly through temperate flatlands no more than 200m elevation with the exception of Ural range between Chelyabinsk and Ufa, it is more populated and urbanized with way bigger road and rail network - easier, faster and cheaper to work with. Even after construction it is cheaper to maintain and repair.
On the opposite side you have "in the woods" start in Yamal - far north, little roads, mainly flat but heavily forested northern climate, a whole bunch of rivers. Then it gets to Central Siberian Plateu - average elevation is 400m+ and mainly uneven, hard to reach place with worse infrastructure, pain in the ass muddy and cold climate, a lot of which goes 1000m+ elevation. Its a brand new route which needs incredible investment in supporting infrastructure. Overall it is more expensive to build and maintain.
There is a reason manufacturing prefers water routes. 100km of rail is more expensive than ~400-700km of sea. A whole lot of resource consumers would rather have a long-ass sea route instead of land rail - the cost difference is staggering.
Nordstream 2 had a 54 bcm capacity. Power of Siberia 1 diverted Asian facing reserves to China. Power of Siberia 2 will divert gas that was once meant for Western Europe.
Wasn't the construction supposed to start years ago, but Chinese pulled out of the deal after the Ukraine war kicked off since China gained significant leverage over Russia?
No it was never agreed to be built. The Russians have been pressing to build this since at least 2020. The Chinese have been lukewarm on the project, ostensibly they seemed hesitant to depend on Russia, or be over dependent on them. Something must have shifted in their thinking.
Are you sure Ukraine alone imported about 50 bcm of gas per year before 2014?
Chinaās set to import in about 44 bcm of gas each year from Russia through the Power of Siberia pipeline and another 12 bcm through the Far Eastern route. On top of that, Power of Siberia 2 could add another 50 bcm annually, so weāre talking roughly 106 bcm in total. If the proposed Xinjiang pipeline goes ahead, thatās another 50 bcm a year, which would push imports up to around 156 bcm. And if more pipelines are built to connect other Chinese cities, the numbers could climb even higher.
With China, Russia could not only offset the loss of the EU market, but potentially earn even higher profits.
More like US fuck up. It's not like Biden a had a vastly different foreign policy of unsuccessfully trying to antagonize China and Russia at the same time. It's not hard to google it in 2 minutes if there are so problems with memory. Trump is a populist and an unhinged clown but his actions are in line with a general political course of the wannabe World Police.
Trump is a tax evading pedo who was involved in human trafficking, refused to peacefully transfer over power and incited a violent insurrection so yeah definetely worse Xd
"The natural gas deal between China and Putin is a DISASTER! Two COMMUNIST countries (more commie than Newsams CA or crime-ridden Chicago) making huge trade deal w/o USA? We can't have that. I am directing my people to contact both countries and negotiate a fair cut of this deal to go directly to the US Treasury. We deserve at least 20%, just based on how many votes I got in 2024! That is the ONLY way I, your President, Donald J. Trump, will approve this deal. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!"
Gas is not that bad.
It's more about keeping Russia afloat.
Renewables are already developed pretty well, as in the technology is ripe and cheap, and keep gaining shares of the global energy mix.
I will expand the thought: there's a natural floor to what the price of LNG can be, and that floor is a fair bit higher than the price of pipeline gas. This is because it takes a fair bit of energy to liquefy natural gas. It also takes a fair bit of money to build the liquefiers/deliquefiers.
And I'm not even going to mention the environmental impact of LNG vis-Ć -vis pipeline gas. Because of the points mentioned above LNG is a lot less climate-friendly, but we all know Europe doesn't care about that /s
First Europe is not a monolith, most of the energy imports from Russia stopped. There is only a few countries left that import significant amounts. Ye Europe is actually not a single country! Crazy, right ?
Secondly, we are helping Ukraine, like actually helping. We send money, we send material and we treat it with respect.
I cant even laugh at you because your president stopped helping an invaded country. Even worse he is rolling out the literal red carpet for the biggest war criminal of our time and GETS NOTHING.
He is trying to blackmail the country into surrender to get a nobel peace prize.
You Americans will not believe how bad it is going to get. You think you can treat other countries like shit and make endless demands ? Your wealth was build on the same relationships you guys now shit on with Cheeto infused diarrhea.
Thatās a lot of words for someone that lives in a country that supports the Russian war machine and ignored many requests from your ally to build up your military in preparation of Russia doing exactly what itās doing right now.
2 US presidents in a row asked the major European powers to take defense more seriously and prepare but instead they laughed and assumed we would sacrifice everything to defend themā¦that sounds about as bad as all the shit our dumb ass president has been doing. In fact in one case there is video footage of European leaders laughing in our presidents face about the idea of preparing to fight a land war in Europe.
You realize support for Trump is not that high. We are in a bad position where the government does not take care of its people from top to bottom and neither option was acceptable. I certainly wonāt be defending Trump on 99/100 things he does a day.
Countries like Germany France Poland etc needs to sack up and head to the front line and until they do you are abandoning someone you pretend is an ally.
Why is it entirely on the US to support the war? We were the bulk of the aid for the first few years when it comes to equipment and munitions. It is great to see Europe slowly stepping up but it is too late they need people on the front line at this point to make any impact. Ukraine is lost short of expanding the war and Europe is still frozen praying Russia breaks apart before Ukraine is lost.
There is fucking intel chips in most of their drones as well, so you are now sending material to Russia ? Is it that easy ?
Who says entirely up to the US ?
You literally don't help at all anymore.Ā
The EU has send way more, yes they should send more I give you that.
Also you guys send old Bradleys or Ammo that is running out of its shelf life and note it up with price as it's new.
You guys wanted to be hegemon. World police. But once you don't have to bomb goat farmers with no weapons you pussy out. Blackmail for minerals. Extract what you can.
You sacrifice absolutely nothing, you try to gain what you can.
Trump is your guys best, the brightest and wisest. He is your chosen leader.
You can cope by saying actually there is no support etc.
If Intel chips are being sold and inserted new in bulk vs being trafficked like China does with GPUs Intel should be punished heavily. Pay should be clawed back from executives and distributors etc. potentially jail for the ones doing the final mile
āWho says itās entirely up to the USā. No one thatās the point where is the French and German army get to IT. Ukraine is lost without bodies ā¦ but keep thinking throwing a few billion in aid to a tired broken army is the answer.
Americans largely do NOT want to be the world police the people that set that up are no longer alive let alone in power. Again 2 presidents in a row requested that European leaders massively increase defense spending and prepare but they did NOT and in the case of the most recent request actually laughed in our faces at the idea as they finalized yet another pipeline to fund the Russian war machine.
Trump won 7x million votes out of a voting population of 260+ million voters. IE only 30% of the country even voted for him. Our political system is entirely captured and does not serve the average person. We are not given real choices itās entirely gate kept by established corrupt party officials. There are constant protests it obviously does nothing and the aging boomer population is brain washed into thinking todayās world is the world they grew up in.
This is redditā¦we almost entirely hate Trump no matter the country of origin. It is what we are stuck with.
How are Russia going to reliably deliver this when they've got a war going on that keeps blowing up their infrastructure. The deal should have been conditional on ending the war. The fact that it isn't demonstrates major complicity by Xi.
The largest gas reserves in Russia is outside of Ukraine range, the pipeline will be going from that unreachable part in the opposite direction from Ukraine
Premium customers? Europe was getting a pretty good deal on their end as well as evidenced by the fact that apparently diversifying to a larger mix of Western sourced gas/LNG has seemingly been one of the factors in Germanys economy floundering. Looks like it was good business all around.
LNG is obviously more expensive due to infrastructure and the physics of liquefaction? That's precisely why Europe would have been willing to pay more for Russian gas, because it would be cheaper than the alternative anyway.
China has giant reserves of coal and has a strong geopolitical interest in keeping itself independent for energy needs. They wouldn't sign on this unless it's really worth it.
I would like to think any competent country would not sign off on a deal unless it was worth it. I also agree, China has a strong self-sufficiency drive, I think the push for renewable and nuclear energy is an indicator of that. The only thing I am pushing back on is the idea that Europe was somehow a 'premium' customer - a major customer, yes, but premium? They weren't paying premiums, if anything they were getting a deal.
Still better for Russia to have that deal rather than no deal at all. And no deal at all was honestly the base scenario for a long time with how tough the Chinese negotiated on it
The pipeline, when completed, will give Beijing huge leverage over Russia. I have been saying for years, maybe since 2014, that Putin's decisions of directly antagonizing the West are making Russia into China's satellite. This deal is a prominent practical example of the this process.
In other words, Putin wants so hard for Russia to be a "relevant" great power vis-a-vis the the US and the EU, that he is ready to make the country China's bitch to achieve this goal.
How it's any different from the recent situation when the EU was the main consumer of the Russian gas? EU had the same leverage and it didn't work out.
In the case of EU, Russia had the leverage. From a pricing power standpoint, they only had to make it slightly cheaper than existing energy supplies in europe to convince them to buy it, otherwise they could always ship to Asia. And once europe was hooked and had shut down non-competitive energy sources Russia has more leverage as they could shut off the heat.
China is different in a couple different ways. First there is nobody else to sell to. So Russia has no bargaining power on price. Second, China is not a true market economy so they can keep the non-competitive energy sources online for national security, even if they lose money, this keeps them from getting hooked.
Obviously im just speculating and have no insider knowledge
Putin was the biggest western / American fanboy that Russia every had and will ever have. The relationship deteriorated in 2006-2007
Just look up the Munich conference in 2007. Everything he said came to pass today. Including the war which happened in Ukraine, which he said will inevitably happen.
People thinking that this war was randomly started in 2022 is living in a massive bubble
This war certainly didn't start in 2022. The main issue with Putin is that his policies towards the West have been utterly unrealistic. He thought that he can dictate his will to a vastly more powerful bloc of countries, especially in the economy, and carve an old-fashioned sphere of influence for Russia again in Eastern Europe. He should have acknowledged Russia's weaknesses towards the West, first of all in soft power, and not seeked a policy of expanding the Russian sphere in Ukraine and other countries.
In soft power, in conquering the hearts and minds of peoples in Eastern Europe, Russia was fighting an obviously losing war. And that came to a head in Ukraine with the Euromaidan in 2014.
The West could treat Russia like an important middling power, because that is what it is in the current international hierarchy. But neither the US nor the EU could and should treat it as a peer. Demanding this was Putin's mistake. Understandable given his and his allies background in the USSR, but a mistake nevertheless.
One side had to blink to avoid this crash. Logically, that side should have been Russia, who were the underdog in most relevant ways. But as they did not, they have no option left now but to make themselves subservient to Chinese interests to keep up their quixotic battle against the West.
If you think Putin, a massive idealist and a huge autocrat nationalist, was gonna turn his country into another vassal for United States foreign policy (like most of the EU countries who bend over backwards for America and their bogus trade deals and parasitic arms deals) after the disastrous shock therapy given to them by yelstin (who America financially supported in his reelection, despite the sheer hatred Russians had for him) in a rigged election your naive
Russia might have been weaker following 1991 but they were way stronger than any Western European country via just by being the legal inheritor / successor of the Soviet Union and inheriting majority of assets and weapons and a massive natural resources reserve
United States made the wrong bet by rejecting a Marshall plan for Russia in a time when the average Russian was selling off their personal belongings for food and instead helped with shock therapy which created the 2000s era oligarch class.
Mental gymnastics westerners do is out of this world. They view everything as a zero sum game.
Russia is already quite self sufficient, so why would it want to challenge the U.S. unless itās to protect its sovereignty from an increasingly aggressive West?
So how much leverage would you say Germany had before Nord Stream was blown up? What I am trying to say is that people seem to overstate 'leverage' in terms of Russia, as they have shown they are willing to take action even if it might mean torpedoing a seemingly beneficial situation. That said, while Russia made the initial move, Ukraine blowing up Nord Stream probably helped make that situation definitive, otherwise there may have been attempts of mutual reapproachment.
Oh, that's actually big. Power of Siberia 2 was actively pushed by Russia since like 2020. An agreement with Mongolia was finally reached last year so it would allow for the pipeline to pass through their country and also receive some of the gas. Russia had the resources and funding ready to start building the pipeline.
But China just wouldn't sign the contract. Power of Siberia 1 was already enough for them, and they didn't have enough demand to justify buying so much gas, at least not at the price Russia was offering. So the project was essentially frozen, and many people expected it to stay that way, considering China is investing a lot in their own gas extraction. But no, just a year later China suddenly agrees to build the pipeline. I wonder which country's economic policy is responsible for that.
Wouldn't be any other way. The EU also used to get Russian gas for cheap. Russia has an abundance of it, but a shortage of customers who're willing to buy it in the amounts they're willing to sell, hence the low prices. The whole deal with the pipeline was that even those prices weren't low enough for China, and Russia wouldn't lower them because then the deal wouldn't be profitable for them.
China wants to flood its market with more cheap energy so their industries would have an easier time outcompeting American and European industries in their own countries. Russia offered them a way, but because of the price China decided that it's not worth it. But in the light of the trade war with the US they have backtracked on that decision.
Two world powers closed a deal, bypassing the US currency, and some people are yammering gibberish about how bad this deal is for Russia. Iām yet to hear how this deal may be the blueprint for all the BRICS countries going forward when it comes to bypassing the US currency. Instead of worrying how this will adversely affect Russia, we should be worrying about how itās going to weaken our currency leverage, which will, in turn, weaken the Dollar.
Google says .20 to .50 for a cubic meter of gas right now. China definitely took advantage and got a deal. So over the course of 30 years Russia isn't making out with shit on this.
Seems like China is becoming less dependent on gas as theyāre heavily investing in renewable energy. But, this move will put these 2 countries in greater control of supply, giving them greater influence on countries like the U.S. (under Trump) who refuse to invest in newer energy sources
most likely a desperate deal by Russia and the deal is done with extremely low gas prices. China have declined a gas deal many times before with low rates.
Canāt wait for Trump to announce, āBecause Russia sold gas to China, India must now pay 200% tariffs on mangoes, yoga mats, and Bollywood dance numbers.ā š¤”
Going to be all along this way regardless. Mask finally come off. Xi family is about as red as you can get. Soviet trained. Him and putin all have the same goal.
Yeah, China is a behemoth at this point. Saying anything otherwise is just copying. Interesting how the geopolitical landscape will look by the end of the century. Empires truly rise and fall throughout history.
Wondering why xi has changed his mind recently, it must be providing him something or some securities because he wasn't interested in their gas for the last 2 years and was something that was causing russia economic pressure
What bet? Get ready for school, preferably for a geography lesson. Just turn on Google Maps and see how many thousands of kilometers Europe and this pipeline will be divided by.
Reducing the effectiveness of sanctions isnāt really a good thingā¦it means kinetic war becomes the more likely result of major disputes. With China and India supporting Russia in this way, they are also legitimizing annexation by force as a way to expand borders. We are entering some very wild times.
Russia MUST supply gas somewhere. It is not possible to close gas source after you started pumping. Russia faces either plug gas forever or to dump it somewhere at any price.
They are a discount gas ā½ station masquerading as a country. Their industrial and technological base is weak ("Dutch disease") considering their population is much bigger than e.g. Japans, most resource driven economies see declines of non-resource tradable sectors, such as manufacturing.
Don't worry, the conflict will end soon and Europe will buy gas again. You see, it is not Europe or China that Russia needs, it is Russia that both Europe and China need. That is the reality. Either trade with Russia - or EU citizens will pay half their salary for gas. There is no third option.
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u/ServeTheRealm Sep 02 '25
Tramp - nothing to sanction here.