Page 6 - FSUOGM Week 17 2022

FSUOGM COMMENTARY FSUOGM

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.

MONGOLIA WHEN Volodymyr Zelenskiy, while still a oil and gas pipeline infrastructure goes west
Ukrainian presidential candidate, was asked to deliver 60% of Russia’s oil and 70% of its gas
about his childhood years in the Mongolian to Europe. But with energy sanctions looming
mining town of Erdenet, he said that he remem- over Russia, it is scrambling to develop more
bers one word very clearly – “baihgui”. It’s an gas and oil pipelines to Asia, where Moscow has
expression that means “we do not have it”, and more friends and willing customers. So far only
was illustrative of the deprivation of the time, the Power of Siberia 1 gas pipeline and Eastern
when Mongolia’s independence from the Soviet Pacific-Siberian Ocean (ESPO) oil pipelines run
Union was nominal at best and grocery store east to the Asian markets, both of them built in
shelves empty. Today while Zelenskiy is leading the last decade.
his nation against Russian aggression, Moscow In early 2022 Mongolian authorities and
is working to secure Mongolia as a junior part- Gazprom approved the feasibility study, not-
ner for a new strategically important natural gas withstanding the fact that Power of Siberia 2’s
pipeline to China. feasibility study is still ongoing. A few days after
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
sian President Battulga Khaltmaa at the 2018 an agreement for the engineering and design
Eastern Economic Forum. In 2019, with a tacit work of the pipeline with the aim of starting
approval from Beijing, and Gazprom, Mongolia’s construction in 2024.
state-owned Erdenes Mongol launched a feasi- During Putin’s recent visit to China for the
bility study of the construction of a Mongolian Winter Olympic Games, a deal linking the Power
leg of the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline – known of Siberia 1 with the Far Eastern Sakhalin-Vlad-
as the “Soyuz-Vostok” pipeline. ivostok pipeline was signed, and parties further
As bne IntelliNews reported, most of Russia’s co-ordinated efforts on Soyuz-Vostok progress.

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 17 26•April•2022