OREANDA-NEWS.  June 05, 2014. Quite a few bits of the Russia-China gas contract puzzle remained unknown after the two sides inked the long-awaited deal.

The key one is for sure the base price for the gas.

Officials said it will remain a commercial secret, but that was fairly quickly calculated by market watchers. But other than that, there are still too many moving parts, most analysts say, among them is Aleksei Kokin, a senior oil and gas analyst at UralSib Capital.

“The problem is that we don't know where exactly the price is going to be charged, whether it's on the border or it's in Shanghai, we have no idea. Besides, we don't know the formula, we understand that it's linked to oil and products, which is fine, but we have no idea how exactly it's linked,” Aleksei Kokin said.

China has an option to provide a pre-payment of up to USD25 billion. Reportedly, a pre-payment option was directly linked to the level of the gas price, and it's still unclear how it was reflected in the final contract. Ildar Davletshin, an oil and gas analyst at Renaissance Capital, says the pre-payment issue itself might be an object of further talks.

“Pre-payment may be still part of negotiations, which probably would include other points like the minimum take-or-pay volume, what revision-provision China can ask for a discount after a couple of years, that's probably still yet to be agreed upon, and also whether or not another gas contract will be signed with China for more volumes, and then finally the tax holidays for Gazprom…that's yet to be approved,” Ildar Davletshin said.

All those remaining unknowns mean that the deal will need continuing support from both Beijing and Moscow over several years before Russia's gas is delivered to China after 2018. Also, there remain many stages to be completed before the contract inked last week in Shanghai will be turned into reality. But for a large-scale project that has taken a decade just to be signed, timelines are likely to remain somewhat distant.