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Comment by rad_gruchalski | Hacker News Reader

Uh, it’s a 30 year contract and China is also investing in Russian lng related companies:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/a-property-sells-10-....

From another source: https://lngprime.com/asia/chinas-zhejiang-energy-to-buy-stak...

> Furthermore, A-Property said that the project involves building a 1358 kilometers long pipeline that would connect Yatek’s fields in Yakutia to the 18 mtpa LNG plant near Ayan on the Sea of Okhotsk.

From there, it seems to be pretty close to China.

I said this in another thread yesterday:

I very much think that this contract is what gave Russia the upper hand. When the Western Europe was the majority market gor Russian gas, things were status quo. Once China starts buying more and more gas from Russia, Russia doesn’t have to please Europe anymore and Europe can impose any sanctions it wants.

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>> I very much think that this contract is what gave Russia the upper hand. When the Western Europe was the majority market gor Russian gas, things were status quo. Once China starts buying more and more gas from Russia, Russia doesn’t have to please Europe anymore and Europe can impose any sanctions it wants.

Yep. If Europe (and Germany in particular) retaliates with economic warfare (err... sanctions) then Russia will simply turn off Nordstream 1. Options to sell to China instead make this much easier for them to do. Maybe there isn't currently a good way to deliver, but have you seen how fast China can build stuff if they really want to?

This idea of Germany voting not to turn on a pipeline that is currently not turned on is just an attempt to make it look like they're doing something when in fact, they are not doing anything.

Indeed. And those who say “yeah, but it’s only 36m cubic meters” kinda gloss over the fact that at any time they can simply ramp up. Those 36m m3 can be just a pilot. Those gas field in Yakutia have half a trillion m3 reserves:

> The firm said it expects Yatek’s gas reserves to rise to 567 billion cubic meters in the third quarter of 2022.

At the same time Europe is decarbonizing. From 2025 on most countries won't allow the installation of new gas heatings. H2 production will start in (somewhat) serious quantities in 2025. Electric cars will start to reduce oil consumption in a meaningful way (Norway is already decreasing motor gasoline consumption by 5-6% year on year).

So the dependency will be reduced on both sides.

Definitely. I think that what's happening now may actually help swinging skeptics to renewables. It's no longer an ideological reason, it's a real physical, short term existential and measurable threat.

> (Norway is already decreasing motor gasoline consumption by 5-6% year on year).

Yeah, but they're a bit of an exception: The decreasing motor gasoline consumption is due to an ever larger share of cars on Norwegian roads being electric. On the whole, though, electric cars are still rather expensive, and Norway is among the countries where they have a larger market share than elsewhere because it is richer than most countries. (Ironically, in large part because it is a major exporter of... fossil fuels.)

Yakutia is relatively close to China, but most Russian gas exported to Europe comes from Western Siberia, which is farther away from China.

It doesn't matter. From https://lngprime.com/asia/chinas-zhejiang-energy-to-buy-stak...

> The firm said it expects Yatek’s gas reserves to rise to 567 billion cubic meters in the third quarter of 2022.

Russia had 48 938 billion cubic meters of proven gas reserves in 2020 ( https://asb.opec.org/data/ASB_Data.php Table 9.1: World proven natural gas reserves by country)

Those 567 billion cubic meters might be a big deal for Yatek, but they're a drop in the bucket for the country as a whole.

At the current 1.8m m3/year, they have plenty of time to build a longer pipeline.

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