The reality is that China is breaking Russias control over the gas basins of Central Asia systematically and ruthlessly. Turkmenistans gas used to flow North, hostage to prices set by Gazprom. It now flows East. President Xi went in person last September to open the new 1,800 km pipeline to China from the Galkynysh field, the worlds second largest with 26 trillion cubic meters. It will ultimately supply 65 BCM, equal to half Gazproms exports to Europe. Much the same is going on in Kazakhstan, where Chinese companies have taken over much of the energy industry. The politics are poignantly exposed in Wikileaks cables from Central Asia. A British diplomat is cited in a 2010 dispatch describing the Chinese commercial colonization of the region, saying Russia was painfully watching its energy domination in Central Asia slip away. Yet more revealing is a cable quoting Cheng Guoping, Chinas ambassador to Kazakhstan, warning that Russia and China are on a collision course, and China will not be the one to yield. In the future, great power relations in Central Asia will be complicated, delicate. The new oil and gas pipelines are breaking Russias monopoly in energy exports.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:41:35 +0000
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