Russia, China inch toward another gas contract

Russia and China could soon sign another major contract on gas pipeline construction project after they signed a landmark 30-year gas deal in Shanghai during Russian President Vladimir Putin's state visit in May, a senior Russian official said Wednesday.

"Given the pace of Chinese economic growth ... with an agreement upon the compromise (gas) price formulas having been achieved, it is very likely that a contract could also be signed in the very near future for the construction of a western route ( gas pipeline) that will fully cross the Siberian Federal District, " Russian presidential administration chief Sergei Ivanov told reporters in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk.

He said the contract on the western route, also called the Altai natural gas pipeline, might be "less capital-intensive" than that of the eastern one, but "it's no doubt going to cost us tens of billions of U.S. dollars," Itar-Tass news agency reported.

The official said the project, like the eastern one, would create jobs and stimulate many economic industries, which will have "a cumulative effect."

The long-awaited gas deal in Shanghai ended a decade of natural gas supply talks between the two neighbors.

According to the 400-billion-dollar deal, Russia will deliver up to 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to China from 2018 via the eastern route. The gas will come from Russia's Kovyktin and Chayandin gas fields in eastern Siberia and will be piped to China's northeast, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei metropolitan area in the north and the Yangtze river delta in the east.