Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived in Russia on June 16 to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, one of Russia's largest annual economic conferences. At the conference, Hu met with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to discuss a bilateral oil agreement. Russia is one of the world's largest energy producers and China is one of the biggest consumers, but these bordering countries have done very little energy trade. Instead, Russia relies mostly on the West as a consumer — it supplies one quarter of Europe’s energy — while China largely relies on energy supplies from the Middle East and Africa imported via sea routes. The reason for this disconnect is that Russia's current oil and natural gas production occurs mostly in the west of the country, while most of China's population is in its east, leaving thousands of kilometers between the source and the consumers. Today's Graphic of the Day shows oil pipelines stretching from Taishet, southern Russia, to Daqing, northwestern China.
