Russia's Gazprom has finally reached a multi-billion dollar deal, 30-year deal to sell natural gas to the China National Petroleum Corporation.  After ten years of negotiations, it opens a new market for Moscow as it risks losing European customers over the Ukraine crisis.

“This is the biggest contract in the history of the gas sector of the former USSR,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin of the crowning achievement of his visit to Shanghai.  Although China clearly held the upper hand in the negotiations, Putin claims it’s a win-win deal.

“Through mutual compromise we managed to reach not only acceptable, but rather satisfactory, terms on this contract for both sides.  Both sides were in the end pleased by the compromise reached on price and other terms,” the Russian president said.

Gazprom reportedly refused to go below US$350 per thousand cubic liters of fuel.  For China, that’s still below the market price of importing liquefied natural gas (LNG).  But it’s slightly below what some of Russia’s European clients are paying, although they probably couldn’t match energy-hungry China’s purchasing volume.  Imported LNG will also help China President Xi Jinping’s “war on pollution” aimed at reducing the use of coal, which is largely responsible for China’s horrible air pollution problem.

It gives Putin political and economic cover for the direction he’s taking Russia, which is away from west.  After economic sanctions on Russian officials because of the Ukraine crisis, as well as differences on Syria, Iran, and Russia’s own treatment of its LGBT population, this could mark the point in which Russia begins looking to the east.