Russia’s Gazprom said an intergovernmental agreement with Beijing to seal a USD400 billion deal to supply gas to China through an eastern route had yet to be signed, although this could happen “in the nearest future”. Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) signed the deal to supply gas through a pipeline in May after a decade of painstaking talks. Russian President Vladimir Putin lauded the agreement as the biggest contract in the “history of the gas sector of the former USSR”. The deal now needs the signature of both governments to come into force. Some analysts and insiders have already expressed their doubts over the validity of the deal, saying that a final agreement on price had not been reached. Russia has announced gas deals with China several times, only for them to prove elusive. In 1997, for example, a USD7 billion deal was clinched to supply 25 billion cubic meters of gas a year to China but the project never materialized, the South China Morning Post reports.