It is a frequent threat from Gazprom executives that if Europe doesn’t start unilaterally opening up to allow the Russian state to purchase distribution and direct sales assets, that they will decide all of a sudden to send the gas to the East to slake China’s growing industrial thirst for energy. We saw this one as another bluff. An excerpt from an Energy Tribune article backs this position up:

There was something unusual about Alexander Medvedev’s visit to Beijing in May: the newly elected Russian president didn’t take his energy minister along. This might easily be explained by claiming that Medvedev just wanted to chat with his Chinese counterparts, but that doesn’t make much sense. Russia and China have been trying to conclude a number of oil and gas pipeline deals, some of which have been pending for years.