Dragon hunting: Russia fighting its way to oriental markets

The West’s distrust in Russia intensified further in 2014 thanks to the well-known political reasons. Pushing Russia from the European market is becoming an obsession of Brussels that is pursuing this policy quite aggressively. Although there are no really practical results, this cannot but irritates Russia that is thinking more and more often about Asian consumers.

Moreover, this part of the world is forecasted to have confident rise in the demand for oil and natural gas.

Meanwhile, Russia’s geographical location enables it to export hydrocarbons both to the west and to the east. This is why the Asian vector of the Russian oil and gas sector looks quite natural.

There is some success in this direction – oil supplies to China and the Pacific coast are rising actively amid a major gas conflict sealed with China in 2014.

However, there are some pitfalls: Russia has to assess profitability of exports, costs of building new infrastructure, the lack of reserves in the east, the importance of avoiding making China the only consumer of hydrocarbons and to consider the necessity of pumping hydrocarbons from Western Siberia, which decreases commercial efficiency of such exports.

Key topics of the report:

• Potential demand on Asian markets

  • Forecasts of oil and gas consumption and imports by Asian countries
  • What window of opportunity does Russia have?

• Gas contract with China: possibilities and threats

  • Production costs of the project and its profitability
  • Real timeframes of the contract implementation
  • The situation in the upstream segment

• Competition between Russian companies for the Asian market

  • Is liberalization of piped gas exports necessary?

• Oil exports to Asia and Europe: what is more profitable?

  • Tariff polices
  • Resource assets of exports
  • Infrastructure possibilities for redirecting export flows
  • Taxation procedures for eastern projects

• Forecast of development of exports to Asia

  • Quantities in the future, possibilities of making new contracts, the pace of implementation, price disputes with consumers

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