Despite a raft of unrelated agreements resulting from talks between President Vladimir Putin (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday, the pair failed to make progress on a long-planned 1,615 mile second pipeline from Siberia to supply China with natural gas. Photo by Alexander Kazakov/EPA
May 20 (UPI) -- Talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday failed to make progress on a long-planned 1,615-mile pipeline to supply China with an annual 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia's Yamal field in Siberia.
The Power of Siberia 2 project negotiations on the final day of Putin's two-day state visit to Beijing stalled due to differences over the timetable, financing and cost of the gas with Beijing holding out for a price of around 12-13 cents per cubic meter, in line with the cost in the domestic Russian market.
Moscow and Beijing signed a binding contract to develop the project during Putin's last visit to China in September but left the details to be ironed out down the line.
Russia wants a similar deal to that for Power of Siberia 1, which experts projected would mean the price of the gas would be at least double the 12-13 cents figure.
