GAZPROM will send additional gas to China and Hungary this year, Alexey Miller, the company’s chief executive, said on Sunday (Oct 22).

Gazprom and China National Petroleum Company have signed an addendum to their 2014 contract that envisions higher gas flows via the Power of Siberia pipeline through the end of this year, the Russian company said earlier on its Telegram channel. According to Miller, additional gas flows to China for the remainder of the year may reach 600 million cubic metres (bcm).

Those volumes are not significant given that estimated pipeline gas flows to China are expected to be 22 bcm this year and 30 bcm in 2024.

Russia and China may agree on raising Power of Siberia gas flows above the current nameplate capacity of 38 bcm/year, Miller said. “We cannot rule out that such an agreement may be reached in the near future,” he said.

Gazprom so far has not reached a new major export deal with the Asian nation. An agreement to send as much as another 50 bcm of Russian gas to China per year via the so-called Power of Siberia 2 link through Mongolia is yet to be finalised, even though both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated last week that they welcome the idea.

Miller did not say how much more gas the company would supply to Hungary throughout autumn and the upcoming winter. Additional gas flows to Hungary were already at 1.3 bcm this year, he said.

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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban last week became the first European Union leader to meet with Putin since an international arrest warrant was issued against him in March over alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Orban met Putin in Beijing on Oct 17, when both attending the Belt and Road Initiative forum hosted by Xi.