The Great Western Gas Fiasco

[unhappycamper]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-margolis/56083/the-great-western-gas-fiasco

The Great Western Gas Fiasco
by Eric Margolis | May 25, 2014 - 8:56am

GENEVA – Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin usually wears a perfect poker face. But last week in Shangahi, the icy-cold Russian president came awfully close to bursting into a big grin.

And why not? Putin had just stolen a march on his western rivals. The US-British attempt to wound Russia’s economy and punish Putin for disobedience had just blown up in their red faces.

After 20 years of difficult talks, Russia and China had just signed a huge deal that called for Russia to export 38 billion cubic meters of gas worth some $400 billion to China. The agreement begins in 2018 and will involve one of the globe’s largest engineering projects that links Russia’s remote gas fields to China’s pipeline system.

~snip~

This was not the much ballyhooed “pivot to Asia” that President Barack Obama expected. It is, however, the long-dreaded embrace between the Chinese dragon and Russian bear that has given western strategists the willies.

[dipsydoodle]

1. Aside from which payment won't be in US$'s.

.

[bemildred]

2. Yep:

One must suspect that the recent fracas in Ukraine was the last straw that pushed China to make a strategic alignment with Russia. Until now, the two great powers had quietly cooperated, not always without problems. Thanks to all the bluster and sabre-rattling from the US and its allies over Eastern Europe and the South China Sea, China decided to deepen and expand its entente with Moscow.