The Power of Siberia, a natural gas pipeline that links Russia and China, commenced operations Monday. The massive project, which will stretch nearly 6,500 kilometers when completed, is an apt symbol of their partnership, one that is dominated by China's ravenous appetite for inputs to drive its expanding economy and in which Russia is a provider of those basic resources. Closer ties between Beijing and Moscow have impacts that reach far beyond those two countries, however, and Japan must accurately assess and respond to them.
Russia possesses 20 percent of global natural gas reserves and accounts for 17.3 percent of the world's gas production; it is the world's largest natural gas exporter. Historically, it has sent that product west: Russian exports account for about 21 percent of Europe's gas pipeline imports. Since it annexed Crimea in 2014, a move that triggered sanctions and intense scrutiny of any reliance on Russia for critical supplies, Moscow has sought to diversify its export destinations to reduce vulnerability to the loss of any of those markets.
Asia has been the obvious alternative, and China is the preferred customer. China's appetite for gas has grown 33 percent in the last two years, it is anticipated to account for 40 percent of the increase in global gas demand until 2024, and it is (relatively) close to underdeveloped gas fields in the north and east of Russia. That logic pushed the two governments to conclude in 2014 a 30-year, $400 billion gas supply contract, the largest in the history of Russia's gas industry. Rollout will be gradual, with gas flow in the Power of Siberia reaching 4.6 billion cubic meters next year, but more than doubling to 10 billion cubic meters by 2021. Eventually, flow will reach 38 billion cubic meters a year, about 20 percent of China's annual liquefied natural gas imports.