OREANDA-NEWS. July 14, 2014. Gazprom, the world largest natural-gas producer, will supply fuel to China at a price close to Germany’s, according to Russian officials.

Keeping parity between Germany and China, which will be Gazprom’s two largest customers after shipments to the Asian country start, may reassure investors that Russia didn’t offer excessive discounts to win a deal that had been sought for more than a decade.

The base price for China National Petroleum Corp. is about USD360 per 1,000 cubic meters, two government officials in Moscow said, asking not to be identified because the information is confidential. That’s near the average USD 366 that Gazprom charged Germany last year, which pays one of the lowest prices in Europe, one of the officials said.

The estimated value of the accord is about USD 400 billion, the largest contract in natural-gas history, Gazprom said when the deal was signed last month. The Russian company had declined to reveal the exact gas price.

Gazprom shares rose as much as 1.6 percent to 151.3 rubles in Moscow and traded at 151.1 rubles at 4:52 p.m. local time.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is pivoting to Asia as a buyer of his nation’s gas to bolster the economy as relations sour with the U.S. and European Union because of the crisis in Ukraine. After more than a decade of talks, Russia signed its first gas deal with China last month.

Gazprom plans to start supplies in 2018 to 2020 reaching 38 billion cubic meters annually within five years. Germany, which has been buying Russian gas for 40 years, imported 40.2 billion cubic meters of Gazprom’s fuel last year. That’s a quarter of Russia’s gas deliveries to Europe.