Moscow and Beijing face tough gas price talks
Beijing and Moscow face difficult negotiations over prices to realise this week’s high-profile announcement of the construction of two pipelines to carry natural gas from Russia to energy-hungry China within five years.
The deal, signed on Tuesday, formed the centrepiece of the state visit by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, to Beijing, designed to cement strategic energy co-operation between the two countries.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, on Wednesday said Russia would sell the gas to China at the “market price”, calculated according to the same formula linked to oil and diesel prices as for sales to Europe.
But China has balked at signing long-term import gas contracts for the past three years as the price of the resource has risen along with that of oil, outstripping domestic rates which are kept artificially low.
China’s failure to import more gas has left a number of newly built gas-fired turbines idle, as power producers have turned to plentiful and cheap coal.
“Coal is going to be the predominantly competing fuel, and this raises the issue of how much gas is going to get used in China,” said John Harris, in the Beijing office of Cera, the energy consultancy.
But the cost of pipeline gas should be cheaper than that of liquefied natural gas, where price rises have been highest, leaving industry executives confident a deal can be struck. “The pipeline gas will be competitive,” said Victor Vekselberg, the director of gas at TNK-BP, whose field will provide the resource for one of the pipelines.
Despite Chinese frustrations over the difficulty of securing concrete energy deals with Russia, the summit between Mr Putin and Hu Jintao, China’s president, their fifth meeting in the last 12 months, has strengthened bilateral ties.
Two-way trade, dominated by Russian sales of arms, oil and logs and Chinese exports of manufactured goods, is rising rapidly and is being complemented by closer political ties.
Mr Putin said Russia wanted to promote co-operation in civil aviation, machinery manufacturing and anti-terrorism, as well as learning from China about how to operate free-trade zones.
But Mr Putin made no firm commitment about one of the projects most sought by China, the construction of an oil pipeline to the Chinese city of Daqing.
“If the project could be implemented, which I have no doubt about, it will help improve [Russia’s] oil supply to China,” Mr Putin said.
The signing of a number of agreements during the visit by the president and a large business delegation was “encouraging”, said Bobo Lo, the head of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House in London.
“But there is a world of difference between signing agreements and actually proceeding with them,” he said.
Russia-based analysts also warned that Beijing and Moscow had signed apparently ambitious energy agreements before, with limited results. They added that, since the texts of this week’s agreements had not been published, it was difficult to gauge the level of commitment of each side.
Stephen O’Sullivan, head of research at Deutsche UFG in Moscow, said several factors might prevent or delay the bringing of reserves from both west and east Siberia to China. He said the cost of constructing the pipelines could be burdensome, especially if China drove a hard bargain on gas prices.
Russia has concerns about becoming too dependent on its former cold war rival in Asia. But the agreements could still foreshadow what Dmitry Trenin, a foreign policy specialist at the Carnegie Moscow Centre think-tank, believes will be a much closer relationship between the two countries.
The Kremlin, says Mr Trenin, is growing weary of western criticisms of Russia’s clampdown on democracy. China, on the other hand, is unlikely to complain about Mr Putin’s authoritarian tendencies.
中俄能源合作“说易行难”
中俄两国政府本周高调宣布，将修建两条管线，在5年内将天然气从俄罗斯输送到能源紧缺的中国。但要实现这一目标，两国在价格方面将面临艰苦的谈判。
本周二签订的此项协议，成为俄罗斯总统普京(Vladimir Putin)此次对中国进行国事访问的核心内容，旨在加强两国之间的战略能源合作。
俄罗斯外长拉夫罗夫(Sergei Lavrov)昨日表示，俄罗斯将以“市场价格”向中国销售天然气，这一价格是根据该国向欧洲销售石油/柴油价格的同样公式计算出来的。
但是，过去3年中，中国不愿签署长期天然气进口合同，因为这种资源的价格与油价同步上涨，超出了其国内人为保持的低价位。
由于中国未能进口更多天然气，致使许多新建燃气涡轮机闲置，因为能源生产商转而采用了供应充足、价格低廉的煤炭资源。
能源咨询机构剑桥能源研究协会(CERA)北京办公室的约翰?哈里斯(John Harris)表示：“煤炭将成为最主要的竞争性燃料，而这将引发中国将使用多少天然气的问题。”
不过，管线天然气的成本应低于液化天然气，这使得业内管理人士坚信，交易一定能达成。液化天然气的价格涨幅一直高居首位。俄罗斯合资企业秋明BP公司(TNK-BP)天然气业务主管维克多?维克塞尔伯格(Victor Vekselberg)表示：“管线天然气会比较有竞争力。”该公司的气田将供应其中的一条管线。
尽管中国由于难以与俄罗斯达成具体能源交易而倍感受挫，普京和中国国家主席胡锦涛的首脑会谈还是加强了双边关系。此次会谈是过去12个月内双方进行的第五次会晤。
中俄双边贸易正在迅速增长，而更为紧密的政治联系也对其起到了补充作用。在贸易方面，俄罗斯主要对华销售武器、石油和木材，而中国则主要出口制成品。
普京表示，俄罗斯希望促进双方在民用航空、机械制造和反恐怖主义领域的合作，同时向中国学习如何运作自由贸易区。
不过，普京并未就中国最想争取的一个项目做出明确承诺，即修建一条通往中国城市大庆的石油管线。
普京说：“如果这个项目能够实现――我对此没有任何怀疑，它将会有助于提高俄罗斯对中国的石油供应。”
在伦敦查塔姆研究所Chatham House负责俄罗斯及欧亚大陆课题的波布?劳(Bobo Lo)表示，在俄罗斯总统和大型商业代表团访华期间签署了大量协议，这种情况“令人鼓舞”。
但他表示：“签署协议和真正执行这些协议，有很大的不同。”
驻俄罗斯的分析人士也警告称，过去中俄两国政府也曾签署过看似雄心勃勃的能源协议，但其成果却都有限。他们补充称，由于本周所签协议的文本尚未公布，因此很难确定双方承诺的程度。
德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)旗下俄罗斯联合金融集团(UFG)驻莫斯科研究主管斯蒂芬?奥沙利文(Stephen O’Sullivan)表示，有几个因素可能阻止或拖延从西伯利亚的西部和东部地区向中国供应天然气。他表示，管线的建设成本会是个很大的负担，特别是如果中国在天然气价格方面非常苛刻的话。
俄罗斯曾担心过度依赖它在冷战时期亚洲地区的竞争对手（中国）。但上述协议仍将预示两国关系将明显更加紧密。这正是智库卡内基莫斯科中心(Carnegie Moscow Centre)外交政策专家迪米特利?崔宁(Dmitry Trenin)的看法。
崔宁表示，俄罗斯政府越来越反感西方国家对于俄罗斯压制民主的批评。而另一方面，中国则不太可能抱怨普京政府的独裁倾向。
