Leaders gather to watch pipeline completion

President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin joined a video link ceremony on Monday to witness the completion and operation of the China-Russia east route natural gas pipeline.

Under a 30-year agreement between Russian company Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp signed in May 2014, the project is expected to pump 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia to China annually.

That amounts to about 13.6 percent of China's gas consumption in 2018, or 280.3 billion cubic meters according to data from the National Development and Reform Commission.

The pipeline stretches over 5,111 kilometers in China and 3,000 kilometers in Russia. Its Chinese section covers eight provinces and one municipality, from Heilongjiang province in the northeast to Shanghai in the east.