Despite the reduction in gas supplies to Europe, Russia is now in the final stages of building its first pipeline with China that could send gas from Siberia to Shanghai.
The 'Power of Siberia', as the project has been called, started sending natural gas to northern China in December 2019.
In China, the pipeline runs to the eastern part of the country, past the capital Beijing and down to Shanghai.
The middle phase began operations in December 2020 and the final southern section is set to start gas deliveries in 2025.
The construction, which has taken about eight years, involved state-owned energy companies, Russia's Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp.
With this new Russia-China pipeline, it is seen to be able to ease the pressure facing Moscow, which is currently squeezed by an energy crisis with the European Union (EU) following its invasion of Ukraine.
While many countries imposed sanctions on Russia, China increased its purchases of energy materials from the country.
Even so, natural gas is still a small part of China's energy imports which mostly use crude oil.
According to Russian news agency INterfax, Gazprom's gas exports to China via pipeline jumped by 63.4% to 7.5 billion cubic meters in the first half of the year.
