Power of Siberia 2 to close deal – or re-route?

A plan to transit Russian natural gas to China via Kazakhstan has recently triggered a hot debate among Chinese pundits over the fate of the long-discussed Power of Siberia 2 project.

Dauren Abayev, Kazakhstan’s envoy to Russia, told Russia’s TASS news agency in an interview on May 4 that Kazakhstan plans to transit about 35 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Russian gas to China annually.

He added that the roadmap of the project has been signed, and he said this plan and Kazakhstan’s plan to import Russian gas for domestic use have entered a price negotiation phase.

Citing Abayevt, Reuters on the same day published an article with a headline “Russia plans to pipe 35 bcm of gas to China via Kazakhstan, TASS reports.”

The Reuters story was translated and reprinted by Chinese state media including the Global Times on Monday and China News Service on Tuesday.

Chinese commentators and academics are offering mixed views on whether the announcement of the Kazakhstan-transit plan means anything for the Power of Siberia 2, which will pass through Mongolia and which has been under difficult negotiations between Beijing and Moscow since 2021.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to discuss the Power of Siberia 2 in Beijing on May 15-16.

“Putin may have already given up his plan to try to lure Mongolia with the Power of Siberia 2,” Alex Tsai, a former legislator in Taiwan and a PhD degree holder from Tsinghua University, said in an interview with BNE TV, a pro-Beijing Chinese TV channel in New Zealand.

“Putin is upset that Mongolia wants to join the United States’s Indo-Pacific strategy,” Tsai said. “He has not yet made a fuss about this only because he is too busy with the Ukrainian war.”