Russian Budget Documents Show China Paying 56% Less for Pipeline Gas Than Other Foreign Buyers in 2026

Russia is selling China pipeline gas at roughly half the price it charges other foreign buyers, and its own budget papers say so.

Documents accompanying Russia's budget law, as reported by The Moscow Times, put Gazprom's average 2026 price for China at $247.90 per 1,000 cubic meters. Other Gazprom customers outside the former Soviet Union are projected to pay $562. That is a gap of $315, or 56%.

The numbers

The discount is widening. The Moscow Times reported that, compared with last year, the discount for China will increase by 15%. In 2025, the same documents show China paying $240.30 against $406.50 for other buyers.

The budget papers show the discount staying large next year. For 2027, China is projected to pay $251.30 per 1,000 cubic meters, 46% less than the $450 projected for other export deliveries.

These are Russian budget projections, not published contract terms.

Volumes make the stakes concrete. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak has said Russia will send 39 billion cubic meters to China through Power of Siberia in 2026.

How the pipeline got here

Power of Siberia runs under a long-term agreement signed in 2014 between Gazprom and China's CNPC. Deliveries began in December 2019. Russia supplied 4.1 billion cubic meters in 2020, and volumes rose 2.5-fold to 10.4 billion in 2021. In 2024, Gazprom delivered 31 billion cubic meters to China.

In 2025, Gazprom brought the line to its designed capacity of 38 billion cubic meters a year. The 2026 target of 39 billion is slightly above that figure.

Worse terms than Turkmenistan gets

Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said Gazprom gets substantially less favorable terms in China than it previously got in Europe. He said they are also worse than what Turkmenistan, another supplier to China, receives.

Using Chinese customs data, Vakulenko calculated that Beijing pays $40 to $60 more per 1,000 cubic meters for Turkmen gas than for Russian gas.

"It's much harder for Russian negotiators today," Vakulenko wrote.

He described the leverage as cutting both ways. "On the one hand, the growing confrontation between the United States and China, and the instability in the Middle East, should push China into reducing LNG imports in favor of pipeline gas, which would likely be to Moscow's advantage," he said.

"On the other hand, the break with Europe has left Gazprom with huge gas reserves in Siberia's Yamal Peninsula that are ready to be exploited but have no customers, significantly strengthening China's position."

Power of Siberia 2 and the price fight

The larger prize for Moscow is a second pipeline. Talks on Power of Siberia 2 have stalled over a pricing dispute, according to Beijing-connected media reports. The Moscow Times reported that Russia hopes to reduce the discounts in the coming years.

Eurasianet, which carried the analysis, argued that the steep discount appears to be the price of Beijing's continued political support for Russia's war in Ukraine. No Russian or Chinese official quoted in the reporting has said that. The documents show prices, not motives.

The revenue picture around the deal is tighter than it was. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a think tank that tracks sanctions, says Russia's fossil fuel export revenues have fallen since sanctions were imposed. The group also says the oil price cap has failed to impose a durable constraint on crude earnings.

The cap was lowered to $44.10 per barrel on February 1, 2026, and frozen there under the EU's 21st sanctions package. CREA says ESPO-grade crude has consistently traded above both cap levels because of strong demand from China and other Pacific markets. It also says the spike in oil prices after reduced shipments through the Strait of Hormuz has prompted a rethink of Western maritime-services restrictions.

China's wider push

Beijing's leverage is not limited to gas. Premier Li Qiang visited Uzbekistan and Tajikistan on October 17-19. The trip produced deals with both countries, including a non-ferrous metallurgy industrial cluster in Tajikistan's Sughd region.

China's Institute of East European, Russian, and Central Asian Studies, a government think tank that informs Beijing's regional policymaking, co-organized a China-Central Asia forum in Bishkek. With Uzbekistan's presidential think tank, it signed a program of joint events and initiatives for 2027.

What to watch

The 2027 budget figures are the next marker. Moscow's own papers assume China will still be paying $251.30 against $450 for other export deliveries.

Whether Russia can cut that discount, or win a price for Power of Siberia 2 that Beijing accepts, remains unresolved.