Russia To Boost Natural Gas Supply To Hungary And China

Russia’s Gazprom will supply more gas to Hungary and China during the winter, CEO Alexei Miller told Russian media, as cited by Reuters.

The update comes on the heels of another report that said Gazprom was working on expanding its gas export infrastructure to China.

The Hungary and China updates come during the Belt and Road summit in China, where Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban met with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to discuss bilateral ties. Hungary is the only EU member still maintaining friendly relations with Moscow, which has made it the focus of much criticism from fellow member states.

China, meanwhile, has become Gazprom’s biggest gas client thanks to the Power of Siberia pipeline, which entered operation in late 2019.

Last year, Gazprom shipped 15 billion cubic meters via the route. This year, it will send some 22 billion cubic meters of gas to northern China via the pipeline, plus some additional volumes that Gazprom agreed with CNPC during the Belt and Road summit.

The pipeline will reach its full capacity of 38 billion cubic meters in 2025 as part of a 30-year contract that is worth over $400 billion, Reuters notes in its report.

Earlier this year, Gazprom’s Miller said the company had accounted for over half of the growth in Chinese natural gas imports since the start of the year. He noted demand for gas in Europe had fallen in 2023 but in China, it has been on the rise.

“At the same time, we see that the Chinese gas market is growing. China's gas imports have increased over the eight months of this year. And more than half of the increase in these supplies imported to the Chinese market was provided by Gazprom,” Miller said in a Telegram post on Gazprom’s channel.

Russia and China have also been discussing a Power of Siberia 2 project that, according to Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, could replace the Nord Stream 2 project in Gazprom’s growth strategy.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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