Quite a lot has already been written about the results of the “historic” gas contract between Gazprom and CNPC. Much more will be written, but for now, it seems to me that the expert and business community is highly skeptical both about the contract itself and about the Putin-China negotiations.
The fact that the rather apt classic quote, "Skumbrievich blew it! He couldn’t stand up to a face-to-face confrontation" (a well-known humorous Soviet-era line), became the top comment on a Vedomosti article about the contract, reflects a mild sense of schadenfreude—a reaction to the dumb state propaganda along the lines of, “We don’t need Europe anymore, now we’re friends with the Chinese.” The Chinese are friends only with themselves; there are 1.3 billion of them, and they’re not bored.
An important reason for the critical comments was, of course, Miller’s sheer arrogance in saying that he would not tell anyone the gas price under the contract, "because it is a commercial secret". Two reactions are entirely natural: are you out of your minds? You’re selling our gas and hiding the price from us? well, obviously—they puffed themselves up, and the Chinese squeezed them like children. Now they’re hiding the price so they don’t look like idiots.
Nevertheless, I suggest that instead of criticizing and attacking right now, we put forward, so to speak, a constructive agenda and conduct my favorite thought experiment: how should I view this if I love Putin?
What key ideas, demands, and views should unite all of us in our attitude toward this contract?
It seems to me that the first demand—one that absolutely all Russian citizens should share with regard to this contract—must be its full disclosure. What kind of “secret” can there be about selling our gas to the Chinese that the Chinese know, but we do not? This is, in effect, an interstate agreement, not a business transaction in a competitive market. We are selling gas 30 years into the future. I will be a pensioner, and my children will still be paying for this contract. So how can its terms be hidden from me? Is it fair to demand full disclosure to us of what the Chinese already know? I think it is.
The second important matter of principle is the pipeline.
Before we start making any profit, we will have to build the pipeline and invest at least $55 billion in it, according to Putin’s estimate. And this is not about Putin; it’s about construction projects—everyone knows that not a single one of them ever stays within the original budget. But fine, let’s say $55 billion.
This money will either have to be borrowed or provided by the Chinese as an advance payment for gas. And how it is spent is the second key issue for both Putin supporters and anti-Putin critics alike. Because, I assume, neither side wants a repeat of the Transneft story, where $4 billion was simply stolen from the $16 billion ESPO project (the Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean oil pipeline).
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Let us formulate a common position on the pipeline—one that can unite the nation: we want the construction of the “Power of Siberia” pipeline to be exemplary in terms of - project openness, - transparency of procurement procedures, - competitiveness in the selection of contractors.
Any companies whose owners hide behind offshore entities must be excluded—146% excluded (a Russian ironic expression meaning “absolutely, beyond any doubt”). Are such demands fair for this new “project of the century”? I think they are.
All sensible people would sign on to them, whether they are Putin supporters, half-supporters, or anti-Putin.
Let us start building our attitude toward the Russian-Chinese gas deal on the basis of these two points. And only after that should we dig into the important details: the transportation tariff, whether there is a mineral extraction tax or not, whether there are customs duties or not, and so on, and so on. There are many interesting things here.