Kazakhstan to join Power of Siberia 2?

Kazakhstan is considering the possibility of joining the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline project, the republic's first Vice Minister of Energy Makhambet Dosmukhambetov said, adding that this is needed to extract gas in the East Kazakhstan Region.

"The gas field in the East Kazakhstan Region has relatively small gas volumes, which do not allow ensuring supplies to the whole area, only in the regional scale," Dosmukhambetov explained. "If Russia and China construct the Power of Siberia 2 and it runs through the Kazakh territory, we will have an opportunity to extract gas in the east using that gas pipeline." he noted.

"However, those issues should be explored thoroughly," TASS cited him as saying.

The project is currently under consideration and negotiations, he said. "Not only the price, the reliability is also a very important aspect, which is why in certain cases we suggest that two alternative sources should be used," Dosmukhambetov stressed.

In 2015, Russia’s Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed an agreement on main terms of pipeline gas supplies from western Siberian fields to China via the ‘eastern route’ (the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline).