The Power of Siberia project is a unified gas transmission system (GTS) involving the development of a 4,000km-long gas pipeline to transfer natural gas from the Irkutsk gas production centers in the prolific Eastern Russia to the Far East and China. This week Gazprom announced that the Kovykta gas field, the largest in the region, is expected to come onstream in December.

The Power of Siberia pipeline is crucial to Moscow's efforts to reroute its energy flows from the West, where governments have imposed sweeping sanctions against Russia following the start of President Putin's war of aggression in Ukraine on 24 February of this year.

The pipeline will pass through five regions in Russia, including the Irkutsk Region, the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia Region), the Amur Region, the Jewish Autonomous Region, and the Khabarovsk Territory.

The system will comprise two gas trunk lines – the 3,200km-long Yakutia – Khabarovsk – Vladivostok gas trunk line and the 800km-long pipeline connecting Kovyktinskoye gas field in the Irkutsk Region with the gas production centre in Yakutia.

The GTS, comprised of 1.4m diameter pipeline and designed to operate at 100 Atmospheres Absolute (Ata) working pressure, will be capable of transporting up to 61 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas per annum.

Gazprom signed a $400bn contract with China National Petroleum (CNPC) in May 2014 to supply 38 billion cubic metres of gas annually for the next 30 years. Approximately $55bn of the total contract value will be invested in the construction of new production and transmission facilities.

Gazprom exported 4.1 Bcm of gas to China in 2020, rising to around 11 Bcm in 2021 and expected to reach 22 Bcm in 2023.