China Pays $248/tcm for Russian Pipeline Gas, 56% Below Gazprom's Other Clients

By Priya Raman

China will pay an average of roughly $248 per thousand cubic meters of Russian pipeline gas in 2026 — against $562 per tcm for Gazprom's other customers outside the former Soviet Union. That is a discount of up to 56 percent, according to Russian Duma documentation cited by The Moscow Times. The number tells the story by itself: Moscow sells to Beijing at barely half the price it gets elsewhere, and Beijing knows it.

What does the discount buy?

The pricing gap is the fiscal cost of dependency. With Western sanctions in force and the European Union cutting its reliance on Russian gas, Chinese purchases have become a critical revenue stream for the Kremlin. The steep discount, the report suggests, is the price of Beijing's continued political support for Moscow's war effort in Ukraine. Russia hopes to narrow the discounts in coming years, according to MT — a hope, not a plan, and one Moscow has little leverage to enforce.

Context makes it worse. An estimate from Carnegie's Russia Eurasia Center shows China pays Turkmenistan up to $60 per tcm more than it pays Russia. That inverts the normal logic of pipeline politics, where a captive customer pays a premium and a diversified one gets the discount.

Talks on a "Power of Siberia 2" pipeline — the proposed link that would carry West Siberian gas to China — have stalled over a pricing dispute, according to Beijing-connected media reports. "It's much harder for Russian negotiators today," Sergei Vakulenko, a senior fellow at Carnegie, wrote in the estimate. On one hand, US-China confrontation and Middle East instability should push China toward pipeline gas over LNG, which would favor Moscow; on the other, Vakulenko noted, "the break with Europe has left Gazprom with huge gas reserves in Siberia's Yamal Peninsula that are ready to be exploited but have no customers, significantly strengthening China's position."

Takeaway: stranded gas meets a single buyer, and the single buyer sets the price.

Kazakhstan: a $1.8 billion smelter, minus the signed contract

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev launched construction of a $1.8 billion copper smelter at the Aktogay deposit in the Abai region. KAZ Minerals is developing the project with NFC, a subsidiary of China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group. Design capacity is 300,000 tons of copper cathodes per year, plus gold and sulfuric acid, with more than 1,000 jobs and first production scheduled for 2030.

Read the fine print, though. A Chinese corporate disclosure dated October 21 shows NFC's Kazakh entity has signed only a preparatory-work agreement, capped at 4.52 billion tenge — about $10 million. The full construction contract remains unsigned. Tokayev met CNMC Chairman Wen Gang, who pledged on-schedule completion and expanded workforce training; a pledge is not a signature.

KAZ Minerals and NFC also signed an MoU on geological exploration and mineral-resource assessment, Kazinform reports. The plan covers remote sensing, geophysical and geochemical surveys, artificial intelligence, and 3D geological modeling to reassess historical data and identify drill sites. No financial commitments, sites, or deadlines were disclosed.

Two more items from Astana:

• Kuryk port: National investment holding Baiterek JSC signed an MoU with Guoyou Materials Group covering a $1 billion investment in the Caspian Sea port, a Middle Corridor hub. Phase one targets a multifunctional terminal with 15 million tons per year of cargo capacity.
• Water and security: 25 Kazakh water-sector specialists are training in China on irrigation modernization, water-saving tech, digital water management, and small hydropower. Separately, the KNB (Kazakhstan's security service) detained 13 Chinese nationals allegedly running an online fraud scheme targeting victims abroad; all 13 were transferred to Chinese custody after a joint investigation with China's Ministry of Public Security.

Kazakhstan also gained observer status in the China-initiated Alliance for Cultural Heritage in Asia, and proposed specialist training, AI-assisted heritage monitoring, and joint Silk Road archaeology. No funding or projects were announced.

Uzbekistan: CNPC courts a Russian supply gap

Uzbekneftegaz, the state oil and gas company, held talks in Tashkent with CNPC, China's largest oil and gas producer. CNPC offered to help diversify Uzbekistan's petroleum product supplies and to open a permanent representative office in Tashkent. The opening exists because Russia created it: Moscow has cut product supply to Central Asian states in recent months after Ukrainian drone strikes destroyed energy infrastructure.

A separate Tashkent conference with a delegation from Shihezi, Xinjiang, produced agreements in logistics, construction, energy, and technology. No details were disclosed. Details rarely are, at this stage.

Tajikistan and Turkmenistan: fiber and forums

Tajiktelecom and China Mobile launched the Tajikistan-China International Digital Corridor — a 1,010 km fiber-optic line from Dushanbe through Khorog to the Kulma Pass, joining China Mobile's 6,100 km network to Beijing. Initial capacity is 1 Tbps (terabits per second), expected to rise to 10 Tbps. Dushanbe frames it as a step toward Digital Silk Road hub status.

Tajikistan's Ministry of Energy and Water Resources also signed an MoU with Xinjiang Shouhai Power Development to assess hydropower potential on the Obihingou River. A Soviet-era assessment put the river's capacity at 2.6 GW — a figure that has waited decades for a customer, and still has no financing attached.

In Ashgabat, a trade forum with Shanxi Province companies yielded two minor contracts. Not every signing moves a market.

Meanwhile, Premier Li Qiang toured Uzbekistan and Tajikistan on October 17-19, and China's IREECAS think tank ran forums in Bishkek and Tashkent, signing a 2027 cooperation program with Uzbekistan's ISRS covering AI and digital governance — soft-power plumbing for hard-power pricing.

Watch item: whether NFC signs the full Aktogay construction contract, and whether Power of Siberia 2 talks move at all while China pays $248 per tcm.