中俄博弈：天然气交易大单凸显主动权向中国转移

2014-07-08 16:07:58来源：可可英语

　　To the casual observer, it’s easy to doubt that China and Russia would have ever struck a natural gas supply and purchase deal during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Shanghai last month. After all, countless summits between Chinese and Russian leaders have come and gone with no final agreement signed for the long-discussed plans to ship more Russian gas to China. However, Putin and Xi finally ended an energy courtship, agreeing to a $400 billion deal for the delivery of 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas to China starting in 2018.

　　中俄天然气交易已经酝酿数年之久，如今终于达成协议。包括这笔交易在内，中俄近十几年年来在能源领域的一系列合作表明，双方博弈的主动权已经逐渐从俄罗斯转移到了中国手中。

　　Long before the Chinese and Russian leaders on May 21 toasted their supply contract, the two countries had viewed each other as attractive natural gas partners. Russia regarded tapping into the Chinese market as essential to its plans to diversify its exports away from Europe, where natural gas demand is projected to grow at a substantially slower pace than in China. Meanwhile, the surge in China’s natural gas demand in recent years made the Chinese eye their northern neighbor, the world’s largest natural gas exporter, as an important source of supply to fill the gap between China’s domestic natural gas production and consumption.

　　上个月，俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔o普京与中国国家主席习近平在上海会面时，外行的观察者们可能不会相信中俄两国会达成天然气供应协议。毕竟，针对俄罗斯向中国增加天然气出口的问题，两国经历了漫长的谈判，双方领导人也进行了无数次会谈，却始终没有结果。最终，普京与习近平终于敲定了4,000亿美元的能源合作协议。双方商定，俄罗斯从 2018年开始，每年向中国输送380亿立方米天然气。

　　Developments in the months leading up to the Shanghai summit may have provided Russia and China with added incentives to get serious about a natural gas marriage. For Russia, the new imperative is the country’s increased isolation from the United States and Europe in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the resulting Western sanctions.

　　5月21日，中俄两国领导人为达成天然气供应协议举杯庆贺。事实上，两国很早便将彼此视为极具吸引力的天然气合作伙伴。俄罗斯希望摆脱天然气出口业务对欧洲的依赖，而中国市场对实现这个计划至关重要。根据预测，欧洲市场的天然气需求增长速度将远远低于中国。而另一面，近几年，中国天然气需求激增，而中国的北方近邻作为全球最大的天然气出口国，自然被中国视为填补国内天然气产量与消费量差距的重要供应来源。

　　Europe’s renewed interest in finding alternatives to natural gas supplies from Russia, and the calls by U.S. policymakers and pundits for Washington to expedite the process for granting LNG export licenses and lift the virtual ban on crude oil exports to help wean Europe off Russian energy, undoubtedly made signing a gas pact with China even more appealing to Moscow.

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