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Chinese Pipe Dreams

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Features | Economy | East Asia

Chinese Pipe Dreams

The Russia-China oil pipeline has been headline news. But is the match of biggest oil producer and largest energy consumer one made in heaven?

The extensive media coverage of the new Russia-China oil pipeline, which became fully operational over the weekend, underscores just how revolutionary the development is.

The pipeline is the first to move crude oil directly from Russia, which was the world’s largest producer of oil in 2009, to China, which in 2010 became the world’s largest energy consumer. Indeed, some analysts note that if added to the existing rail shipments, the volume of Russian oil delivered to China could more than double in a few years. If this happened, it would fundamentally transform the energy relationship between these two Asian great powers, which until now have pursued largely independent, and in some ways competing, energy strategies.

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