Page 6 - AsianOil Week 17 2022

AsianOil COMMENTARY AsianOil

Russia poised to exploit Mongolia

on Soyuz-Vostok pipeline

Moscow is working to secure Mongolia as a junior partner for a new strategically

important natural gas pipeline to China

PIPELINES & WHEN Volodymyr Zelenskiy, while still a Most of Russia’s oil and gas pipeline infra-
TRANSPORT Ukrainian presidential candidate, was asked structure goes west to deliver 60% of Russia’s oil
about his childhood years in the Mongolian and 70% of its gas to Europe. But with energy
WHAT: mining town of Erdenet, he said that he remem- sanctions looming over Russia, it is scrambling
Moscow is working to bers one word very clearly – “baihgui”. It’s an to develop more gas and oil pipelines to Asia,
secure Mongolia as a expression that means “we do not have it”, and where Moscow has more friends and willing
junior partner for the was illustrative of the deprivation of the time, customers. So far only the Power of Siberia 1 gas
Soyuz-Vostok pipeline. when Mongolia’s independence from the Soviet pipeline and Eastern Pacific-Siberian Ocean
Union was nominal at best and grocery store (ESPO) oil pipelines run east to the Asian mar-
WHY: shelves empty. Today while Zelenskiy is leading kets, both of them built in the last decade.
The idea of a trans- his nation against Russian aggression, Moscow In early 2022 Mongolian authorities and
Mongolian gas pipeline is working to secure Mongolia as a junior part- Gazprom approved the feasibility study, not-
is not new but is ner for a new strategically important natural gas withstanding the fact that Power of Siberia 2’s
increasingly important as pipeline to China. feasibility study is still ongoing. A few days after
Russia pivots east. The idea of a trans-Mongolian gas pipeline is the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
not new and was revived by Mongolia’s pro-Rus- Erdenes Mongol and Gazprom speedily signed
WHAT NEXT: sian President Battulga Khaltmaa at the 2018 an agreement for the engineering and design
There is little reason to Eastern Economic Forum. In 2019, with a tacit work of the pipeline with the aim of starting
believe that Mongolia will approval from Beijing, and Gazprom, Mongo- construction in 2024.
be able to shield itself lia’s state-owned Erdenes Mongol launched a During Putin’s recent visit to China for the
from the political and feasibility study of the construction of a Mon- Winter Olympic Games, a deal linking the
geo-technical risks of golian leg of the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline Power of Siberia 1 with the Far Eastern Sakha-
Soyuz-Vostok. – known as the “Soyuz-Vostok” pipeline. lin-Vladivostok pipeline was signed, and parties

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 17 29•April•2022