Shares of China Gas Holdings and its largest shareholder Beijing Enterprises Holdings have surged more than 10% on the back of Russia’s long-term natural gas supply deal with China that was signed in May, as they are seen as the biggest beneficiaries with substantial operations in China. The import deal secures long-term energy for Chinese distributors whose growth has been crimped by supply. But the companies may have underestimated the risk of potential delays in gas delivery and the time it will take for output to ramp up. This could be a challenge for China Gas to hit its target to triple distribution volume with Russian gas in the next five financial years, Macquarie Securities analysts said in a research report. They expected Russian gas to start flowing to China in 2019 at the earliest and that a ramp-up to full capacity would take five years. This cautious view is in line with that of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, which is affiliated with Britain’s University of Oxford. “Russian infrastructure projects are typically over budget and late,” the report said, which cited an even more conservative projection by industry consultancy Wood Mackenzie, which expects 5 billion cubic metres (BCM) of gas supply via the ‘Power of Russia’ pipeline in 2020, and thereafter expects a gradual ramp-up to the contracted 38 BCM by 2025 – seven years later than expected, the South China Morning Post reports.