Gazprom starts planning the second line of the gas pipeline to China

Russian gas giant Gazprom began the process of designing and prospecting the second line of the gas pipeline to China, Siberian Force 2, as reported the company's president, Alexei Miller.

According to the executive, quoted by Interfax, the objective of this pipeline "is the connection of the gas transport infrastructure of the east and west of Russia, the gasification of Eastern Siberia," in addition to being the "basis of a new channel for exports to China through Mongolia".

Miller specified that the pipeline could transport up to 50 billion cubic meters of gas annually "to both Europe and Asia"

The first Siberian Force line was launched on December 2, and is expected to export more than one million cubic meters of natural gas to China over the next 30 years, which will bring Russia some $400 billion ('363.208 million) in that period.

This project involved investments of some 55 billion dollars (49.938 million euros) on both sides of the border.
According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, this contract, signed in 2014, "was the largest in the history of the national gas sector" in Russia.

The construction of the first stage of the Siberian Force, 2,160 kilometres long, from the Chayadinskoe site to the Chinese border, began in 2014.

In 2015, Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed an agreement for the construction of a gas pipeline from the Western Siberian fields to China along a "Western route" (Siberian Force 2) that initially provided for the supply of 30 billion cubic metres of gas per year.

After almost five years of studies to establish the profitability of this project, last March Putin instructed the start of the project and prospecting phase of this pipeline.