Russia is Sending Energy Supplies to China at Record Rates
Jose Nino
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According to an announcement by Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 30, 2022, deliveries of Russian oil to China in the timeframe of January to November grew by 10.2% on a year-on-year basis and totaled to 79.78 million metric tons.
TASS reported that Putin announced his plans to boost gas pumping in 2023.
“Energy supplies have reached unprecedented levels, and joint efforts are underway to build capacity in the sectors of hydrocarbon production and processing,” he stated on November 30 during a video conference discussion with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Putin declared that “this year, Russia has become one of the leaders in oil exports to China.”
“As of today, we are second in pipeline gas supplies to China and fourth in imported LNG (liquefied natural gas); 13.8 bln cubic meters were supplied via the eastern route by December 1, and the surplus of daily contractual obligations reached 18% in December,” Putin noted. “We will boost the volume of pumping even more next year,” the Russian leader added.
In November, Russia exported 7.8 mln metric tons of oil to China In doing so, Russia became China’s largest supplier of oil. According to figures published on December 27 by China’s General Administration of Customs, Russia overtook Saudi Arabia in November, with the total amount of deliveries reaching 6.6 million metric tons.
In terms of oil supplied for 11 months of 2022, Russia is right behind Saudi Arabia, which exported 80.38 million metric tons of oil to China during that time frame.
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping spoke earlier on December 30 on a video conference call. Xi Jinping declared that China and Russia should increase their cooperation on trade and energy matters.
“Our countries should proactively build up productive pragmatic cooperation in trade and economy, energy and financial sphere, and in the sphere of agriculture, use existing working mechanisms and channels for the dialog for this purpose,” the Chinese leader stated.
The Russia-China strategic partnership is not going away anytime soon. A combination of shared interests and a shared foe in the US have pushed the two Eurasian heavyweights together. Contrast this to the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s that the US masterly exploited during the administration of Richard Nixon.
Sadly, poor statecraft coming from Washington has made the Russia-China partnership a reality. Even worse, the US’s foreign policy overreach has created the environment for a geopolitical “Legion of Doom” to form that will ostensibly balance against Western encroachments in Eurasia. That’s what happens when a government allows for fanatic ideological currents such as liberal interventionism and neoconservatism to become the animating forces of foreign policy decision-making.
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