The best boast that Gazprom boss Alexei Miller could muster at St. Petersburg was that the price would be more than $350 per thousand cubic meters, which converts to $9.75 per mmbtu. That is to say, better than what China had been hoping for and even less than Gazprom gets from current European customers, which averages a little less than $11 per mmbtu. Then too Gazprom will have to spend maybe $30 billion building new pipelines from its West Siberian heartland and/or drilling for new supplies closer to China in East Siberia. "New capex will likely cause free cash flow to turn negative in the medium term," an analyst from Renaissance Capital in Moscow told Bloomberg, financial wonk language for Gazprom got taken to the cleaners. Gazprom shares stayed more or less flat on the news, while those of Chinese gas distributors like China Gas Holdings (HKG:0384) and Beijing Enterprise Holdings (HKG:0392) took a jump. - www.minyanville.com