Petrodollar Alert: Putin Prepares To Announce Holy Grail Gas Deal With China Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/21/2014 09:41 -0400 China Crude Crude Oil fixed Germany India Iran Iraq Kazakhstan Natural Gas Newspaper None Renminbi Reserve Currency Reuters Ukraine Unemployment White House inShare 54 If it was the intent of the West to bring Russia and China together - one a natural resource (if somewhat corrupt) superpower and the other a fixed capital / labor output (if somewhat capital misallocating and credit bubbleicious) powerhouse - in the process marginalizing the dollar and encouraging Ruble and Renminbi bilateral trade, then things are surely going according to plan. For now there have been no major developments as a result of the shift in the geopolitical axis that has seen global US influence, away from the Group of 7 (most insolvent nations) of course, decline precipitously in the aftermath of the bungled Syrian intervention attempt and the bloodless Russian annexation of Crimea, but that will soon change. Because while the west is focused on day to day developments in Ukraine, and how to halt Russian expansion through appeasement (hardly a winning tactic as events in the 1930s demonstrated), Russia is once again thinking 3 steps ahead... and quite a few steps east. While Europe is furiously scrambling to find alternative sources of energy should Gazprom pull the plug on natgas exports to Germany and Europe (the imminent surge in Ukraine gas prices by 40% is probably the best indication of what the outcome would be), Russia is preparing the announcement of the Holy Grail energy deal with none other than China, a move which would send geopolitical shockwaves around the world and bind the two nations in a commodity-backed axis. One which, as some especially on these pages, have suggested would lay the groundwork for a new joint, commodity-backed reserve currency that bypasses the dollar, something which Russia implied moments ago when its finance minister Siluanov said that Russia may refrain from foreign borrowing this year. Translated: bypass western purchases of Russian debt, funded by Chinese purchases of US Treasurys, and go straight to the source. Here is what will likely happen next, as explained by Reuters: Igor Sechin gathered media in Tokyo the next day to warn Western governments that more sanctions over Moscows seizure of the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine would be counter-productive. The underlying message from the head of Russias biggest oil company, Rosneft, was clear: If Europe and the United States isolate Russia, Moscow will look East for new business, energy deals, military contracts and political alliances. The Holy Grail for Moscow is a natural gas supply deal with China that is apparently now close after years of negotiations. If it can be signed when Putin visits China in May, he will be able to hold it up to show that global power has shifted eastwards and he does not need the West. More details on the revelation of said Holy Grail: State-owned Russian gas firm Gazprom hopes to pump 38 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas per year to China from 2018 via the first pipeline between the worlds largest producer of conventional gas to the largest consumer. May is in our plans, a Gazprom spokesman said, when asked about the timing of an agreement. A company source said: It would be logical to expect the deal during Putins visit to China. Summarizing what should be and is painfully obvious to all, but apparently to the White House, which keeps prodding at Russia, is the following: The worse Russias relations are with the West, the closer Russia will want to be to China. If China supports you, no one can say youre isolated, said Vasily Kashin, a China expert at the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) think thank. Bingo. And now add bilateral trade denominated in either Rubles or Renminbi (or gold), add Iran, Iraq, India, and soon the Saudis (Chinas largest foreign source of crude, whose crown prince also happened to meet president Xi Jinping last week to expand trade further) and wave goodbye to the petrodollar. As reported previoisly, China has already implicitly backed Putin without risking it relations with the West. Last Saturday China abstained in a U.N. Security Council vote on a draft resolution declaring invalid the referendum in which Crimea went on to back union with Russia. Although China is nervous about referendums in restive regions of other countries which might serve as a precedent for Tibet and Taiwan, it has refused to criticize Moscow. The support of Beijing is vital for Putin. Not only is China a fellow permanent member of the U.N. Security Council with whom Russia thinks alike, it is also the worlds second biggest economy and it opposes the spread of Western-style democracy.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 23:03:49 +0000
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