Sanction-defying pipeline: Russia, China to build Power of Siberia 2

In a move that could have a major impact on the global energy market, Russia and China signed a historic 30-year agreement on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit to build and operate the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, a long-delayed project that is now taking on huge strategic significance. Alexei Miller, Gazprom CEO, confirmed to Chinese and international media the agreement reached by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and said that the memorandum of understanding for the construction of the pipeline had already been signed.

The pipeline will transport about 50 billion cubic meters of gas annually from Western Siberian reserves to northern China, via Mongolia, and the deal will run for three decades. The price of gas delivered to China will be set by a separate agreement, but it is clear that Beijing gains a significant advantage, given that Russia, largely cut off from the European market due to international sanctions, is forced to sell at lower prices than previously practiced in Europe.

In parallel, Gazprom announced the intensification of deliveries through the already existing Power of Siberia 1 pipeline, put into operation in 2019 as part of a thirty-year contract, a project valued at 400 billion dollars.

The signing of this new memorandum comes at a sensitive moment, marked by threats from the United States of secondary sanctions against any country importing Russian energy, which turns the gesture into a statement of defiance addressed to the West. Experts quoted by the international press emphasize that, after years of negotiations in which China has shown interest but undecided, Beijing is now sending a clear signal of strategic support for Moscow, in a geopolitical context dominated by the war in Ukraine and the BRICS efforts to shape a multipolar world.

The presence of the President of Mongolia (a state that will be crossed by the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline on its way to China), Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, in Beijing and the signing of almost twenty additional agreements confirm the importance of this Russia-Mongolia-China axis, presented by the Russian state press as a warning to the West and a hope for the Global South.

In these conditions, it can be said that Power of Siberia 2 is not just a pipeline, but a geopolitical bridge that marks the reconfiguration of the global energy balance, anchoring Russia and China in a relationship of long-term interdependence, with direct reverberations on the West and on the economic architecture of the emerging multipolar world.