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October 13, 2009

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Putin set to sign huge China deals

RUSSIAN Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing last night for a visit expected to yield a slew of deals on cooperation in development of oil, gas and other strategic resources.
Putin was met by Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi when he arrived for the start of his three-day trip, his first visit to China since becoming prime minister in May.
Nearly three dozen contracts in energy, mining, transportation and infrastructure, worth more than US$5.5 billion, are due to be signed during Putin's visit, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov said in Moscow.
Over the weekend, Russian and Chinese negotiators met in Beijing to put the final touches on those agreements.
The two sides have "entered a new stage of long-term, strategic cooperation on energy," Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan said on Sunday, in his meeting with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin.
Sechin pledged to work with China to further expand crude oil trade and cooperation.
This year, Moscow signed a US$25 billion pact to help finance a pipeline to supply oil from its untapped Siberian reserves to China.
In exchange, China was guaranteed a 20-year supply of crude oil, just part of the US$100 billion in China-Russia energy-related deals agreed to this year.
Work on both the Russian and Chinese sections of the Siberian oil pipeline was due to wrap up by late 2010.
The pipeline is due to begin supplying China 1.5 million tons of oil annually, starting in 2011.
One of the agreements that might be signed during Putin's China visit is a contract to build a massive joint-venture refinery in the northern city of Tianjin, near Beijing.
State-run China National Petroleum Corp, which would own 51 percent of the venture, and its partner, Russia's Rosneft, plan to finish building the refinery by 2012, the 21st Century Business Herald newspaper reported yesterday.
"Energy cooperation is an important part of the China-Russian strategic cooperative partnership and the two countries' economic and trade cooperation," Wang Guangya, Chinese vice foreign minister, said last Friday.
During Putin's visit, President Hu Jintao would meet him and Premier Wen Jiabao would hold talks with him today.
Putin would also attend the 14th bilateral prime ministers' regular meeting and the eighth prime ministers' meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states.
The SCO groups China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Mongolia, India, Iran and Pakistan are observers of the regional organization.




 

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