China's CNPC signs a new gas supply agreement with Russian Gazprom

Russian gas giant Gazprom and Chinese oil and gas group CNPC have signed Heads of Agreement (HoA) for pipeline gas supply from Russia to China via the "western route": gas will be exported from Western Siberia's fields in Russia to China, via a proposed new gas interconnection. The project will not affect the proposed "eastern route", on which the intergovernmental agreement is already ratified: the "Power of Siberia" gas pipeline project will link the Irkutsk and Yakutia gas production centers to the Russian Far East and China. A Sale and Purchase Agreement on the eastern route was signed in May 2014 for annual deliveries of 38 bcm over a 30-year period.

The HoA was part of a series of agreements between the two countries. Gazprom and CNPC also signed another Agreement of Strategic Cooperation on their cooperation in the gas sector, as the previous 10-year Agreement expired in 2014. In addition, China Three Gorges Power Corporation (CTGPC) and RusHydro decided to jointly develop a 320 MW hydropower plant on the Bureya river in eastern Russia. The Nizhne-Bureyskaya project would export power to China. In November 2014, the two companies had signed a preliminary agreement for the establishment of a joint venture (51% RusHydro, 49% CTGPC) for financing, building and operating four hydropower plants with a capacity of up to 2,000 MW in Russia’s Amur Oblast and Khabarovskiy Kray: Nizhne-Zeyskaya (400 MW), Selemdzhinskaya (300 MW), Giluyskaya (462 MW) and Nizhne-Nimanskaya (600 MW) hydropower plants.