Asia's Long-Term Gas Crunch Is Pushing China to Wire Itself With Pipelines Instead of Betting on LNG

Asia's Long-Term Gas Crunch Is Pushing China to Wire Itself With Pipelines Instead of Betting on LNG As Asian buyers pay record LNG spot prices, China is expanding a web of pipeline imports — and a 50 bcm Power of Siberia 2 is the missing piece Beijing still hasn't nailed down. Asian natural gas buyers have paid record prices for LNG cargoes in recent weeks as the global energy crunch sent spot prices skyrocketing amid scarce supply, and analysts warn the problem may not be confined to a single winter.⁴ A structural, multi-year crunch — rather than a one-off seasonal spike — is the backdrop against which China is reshaping how it imports gas, and the strategy is increasingly to avoid the spot LNG market that is punishing its neighbors.⁴ China's answer is to build pipelines on multiple fronts. Its pipeline gas imports reached 59.4 million tons in 2025, drawing on a diversified set of corridors rather than any single supplier.¹ Three pipelines from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan cross Kazakhstan into Xinjiang, supplying over 40 bcm a year, while the 793-kilometre Myanmar-China line, operational since 2013, was designed to carry 12 bcm annually.¹ Each corridor is a hedge against the seaborne market where Asian buyers are competing for scarce cargoes.⁴ Russia has become the swing supplier in that diversification. Power of Siberia 1 delivered 38 bcm of gas from Russia to China last year, and Putin and Xi agreed at their September meeting to raise its capacity to 44 bcm per year.¹ That expansion alone adds firm, contracted volume that insulates China from LNG price spikes, which is precisely why Moscow's pivot east is read as a strategic challenge for Europe competing for the same Russian molecules and the same LNG.² The centerpiece remains unbuilt and unfinalized. The planned Power of Siberia 2 system would span 2,600 kilometres and transport 50 bcm of gas annually to China via Mongolia, drawing on Russia's Arctic Yamal fields.¹ Russia said a general understanding was reached with China on the pipeline during Putin's summit with Xi in Beijing, but key details and a timetable still need to be agreed.¹ China's 15th five-year plan, released in March, committed only to advancing "early-stage" work, language that signals intent without commitment.¹ The gap between the 50 bcm on the drawing board and the volumes actually flowing is what leaves Asia's crunch unresolved. PoS1 at 44 bcm, Central Asia at 40-plus bcm and Myanmar at 12 bcm give China a substantial pipeline base, but none of it fully replaces the flexibility — or the exposure — of the LNG market that is setting record prices.^1,4 Until PoS2 moves from understanding to construction, the pipeline strategy is incomplete.¹ The LNG that China is trying to lean away from carries its own emerging cost. The environmental credentials of LNG are under increasing scrutiny because, despite emitting about half the CO2 of coal when burned, the value chain remains carbon-intensive and plagued by methane losses.³ As emission-related costs rise, the case for contracted pipeline gas over spot LNG strengthens further for a buyer of China's scale.³ The competition with Europe sharpens the stakes. Moscow's fast-evolving gas pivot to Asia redirects volumes that once flowed west, meaning every firm Chinese pipeline contract is gas that Europe cannot count on, tightening the LNG market both regions then share.² Asia's crunch and Europe's supply anxiety are two sides of the same redirected flow.⁴ The signal to watch is whether Power of Siberia 2 advances from "general understanding" to a firm agreement with a timetable, and whether China's pipeline expansion outpaces its LNG dependence.¹ If the pipelines fill, China rides out Asia's gas crunch on contracted volume; if PoS2 stays early-stage, Beijing stays exposed to the record LNG prices its neighbors are already paying.⁴