Prospects And Challenges Of Sino - Russian Energy Cooperation

As one of the core concerns for many countries, the energy issue has close relationswith national development strategy, the social stability and the well-being of the people.In the same time, the energy issue reminds us of the emission reduction, the greenhouseeffect and other international hot topics. Today, the energy sources including coal, oil andother fossil fuels are widely used; tomorrow, the natural gas energy will be the bestalternative energy in future. Natural gas is clean energy, of high quality and efficiency,and its carbon dioxide emissions are only about one-half of coal. By2040, the proportionof natural gas use will be the same as oil, and will exceed the oil by2050, becoming theworld’s most popular source of energy.China has a huge demand of consumption for energy resources. China needs to putmuch greater importance on the use of natural gas, to change the energy consumptionstructure and the economic development model, so as to guarantee its socio-economicdevelopment. As the domestic production of natural gas can not meet the energyconsumption need, it will be necessary for China to accelerate the internationalcooperation in the natural gas fields and to diversify the structure of its natural gasimportation.Rich in energy resources and neighboring to China, the Russia is well-known for itsnatural gas reserves. We can even say that the China-Russia Cooperation in the naturalgas fields is destined with a bright future. On21may2014, China and Russia reached agreat deal of natural gas, worthy400billions of dollars, which was a great symbol for thetwo countries20-year-long negotiation in the natural gas cooperation. In effect, the dealis a great achievement, but in some way late: the international energy marketenvironment turning down, the disagreement in the price, and most important, the twocountries’ political considerations and other factors made the China-Russia natural gascooperation a zigzag course in the past20years.The China-Russia natural gas cooperation is an excellent epitome of the Sino-RussianEnergy cooperation. The progress, the zigzag even the retrograde of the wholenegotiation in the natural gas cooperation perfectly reflect the current situation, theopportunities and the challenges of the whole Sino-Russian energy cooperation. From theoverall and long-term perspective, China-Russia natural gas cooperation will eventually march forward hand in hand with the overall situation of Sino-Russian relations. This isalso the case for China-Russia energy cooperation.