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Bank of China to extend €2 bln credit line to Russia's Gazprom

An agreement on extension of a credit line worth €2 bln for a 5-year period was signed in Shanghai on Thursday

Headquarters of Russia's state-run natural gas giant Gazprom AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

Headquarters of Russia's state-run natural gas giant Gazprom

© AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

MOSCOW, March 3. /TASS/. Gazprom and Bank of China Limited (London Branch) made an agreement in Shanghai on Thursday on extension of a credit line worth 2 bln euro for a 5-year period, Russia’s gas giant reported.

The agreement was signed by Gazprom’s Deputy Chairman of the Management Committee Andrey Kruglov and Vice President of Bank of China Limited (London Branch) Huabin Wang. "In Gazprom’s history this is the biggest transaction to raise finances directly from a credit organization, and the first bilateral credit agreement with a Chinese bank," Gazprom reported.

Also, Andrey Kruglov and Vice President of Bank of China Gao Yingxin discussed prospects of cooperation between Gazprom and Bank of China.

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Bank of China, formally established in 1912, provides a comprehensive range of financial services to customers across the Chinese mainland as well as 41 countries and regions. Its core business is commercial banking, including corporate banking, personal banking and financial markets services.

In February, Gazprom’s Deputy Chairman of the Management Committee Alexander Medvedev said the company was ready to implement projects to supply gas to China on its own, without raising Chinese funding. Currently, Gazprom constructs the Power of Siberia gas pipeline to deliver gas the Yakutsk and Irkutsk gas production centers in Siberia to Russia’s Far East and China. Its capacity is expected to be 61 billion cubic meters per year.

On May 21, 2014 Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation signed a 30-year contract on Russia's pipeline gas supplies to China via two routes. The eastern route stipulates the supply of 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas to China annually. The project is worth $400 bln. The 2,700-kilometer-long western route envisages the supply of 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas to China annually from gas deposits in West Siberia. The western route, called Power of Siberia-2, is intended to run across the highly mountainous area of the Altai region in West Siberia to China. The plan is to launch supplies in 2019.

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