BEIJING (Agencies) - Chinese President Hu Jintao and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, attended a ceremony in Beijing on Monday to mark the completion of the pipeline that will bring Siberian crude oil to China, but failed to finalize pricing for a similar pipeline for gas.

""The smooth completion of the pipeline project is a model for the two countries' mutually beneficial win-win cooperation and a milestone for China-Russia energy cooperation,"" Hu said.
The ceremony came after the two held talks, during which Hu said the two sides should strive to ensure safe operation of the project.
Medvedev said the pipeline will help create closer ties between the two countries.
Representatives of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) in the northeast Chinese city of Daqing and representatives of Russian oil pipeline giant Transneft in the Russian town of Skovorodino reported the completion of the project via a live video-audio broadcast during the ceremony at the Great Hall of the People.
Construction of the 999-kilometer pipeline began last year. Some 927 kilometers of the pipeline is in China while 72 kilometers of it is in Russia, reported Xinhua.
A branch of the new East Siberian-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline is set to start bringing 300,000 barrels per day across the border on January 1, 2011, giving Russia a new oil export route.
The pipeline starts in the Russian town of Skovorodino in the far-eastern Amur region and enters China at Mohe County before continuing to Daqing, a petrochemicals hub in northeastern China.
The pipeline is part of a bilateral loan-for-oil deal reached in February 2009 between the two countries. Under the deal, China makes a $25-billion-long-term loan to Russia while Russia supplies China with 300 million tons of oil through pipelines from 2011 until 2030.
The development of vast Russian fields in east Siberia over the past decade, partly financed by China, has allowed Russia to create a northeast Asian oil-trading hub that connects it to the world's three largest consumers -- the U.S., China and Japan.
Medvedev will wrap up his trip with a look into the future at Shanghai's World Expo — a showcase of the economic boom that has stoked China's appetite for energy supplies from its larger but far less populous and slower-growing northern neighbor.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin laid the cornerstone on Tuesday for a 13-million-ton-per-year oil refinery in the city Tianjin. A spokesman for Sechin said Russia would supply 70 percent of the oil for the $5 billion refinery, which is to be built in two years, reports Moscow Times.
The volume of trade between Russia and China increased sharply in the first half of the year to $25.5 billion and was on pace to return to the $55.9 billion recorded in 2008, before the economic crisis, according to the Kremlin. But Russia is eager for broader inflows of Chinese cash to help fuel growth.
But the failure to reach an agreement on pricing has stymied progress for the gas pipeline, despite huge potential of Russian supply and Chinese demand.
Medvedev’s predecessor Vladimir Putin, agreed in 2006 to build two pipelines to China, exporting 68 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
Photo: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (L) shakes hands with President Hu Jintao after a bilateral meeting and agreement to open a new pipeline and boost trade in China at the Great Hall of the People during his state visit on September 27, 2010 in Beijing, China. The Russian President arrived yesterday in northeast China's port city of Dalian on his three-day China to visit. Medvedev is on his second state visit to the country since he assumed presidency in May 2008. (Photo: Getty Images)