Efforts on to revive TAPI gas pipeline project

Efforts will be made to revive a gas pipeline project involving India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan during a meeting in Ashkhabad next month, according to a media report on Tuesday.

This will be first meeting in three years to discuss the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project.

Experts from the four countries will meet in Turkmenistan's capital on April 17-18 to discuss the $4 billion pipeline's route and the volume of gas that Turkmenistan can supply to India and Pakistan, the Dawn newspaper quoted its sources as saying.

India was to host a meeting of experts in 2008 but it was postponed.

There have been no expert-level talks on the venture since then.

The experts' will precede a meeting of a ministerial steering committee, the sources said.

"Pakistan is committed to the project because of the wide gap between gas demand and supplies," said a senior official of the petroleum ministry.

He said Turkmenistan had been unable to provide independent certification of gas reserves in fields to be dedicated to the project.

The certification of Turkmenistan's gas reserves was a key issue discussed at the last meeting of the ministerial steering committee, which was held in Islamabad in 2008.

The issue will be taken up again at the upcoming meeting in Ashkhabad to enable the countries to proceed with the project.

The security situation in Afghanistan will be another key issue in the discussions.

The upcoming meeting will specify allocation and requirements for gas in the recipient countries through the pipeline which will stretch over 1,600 km from Turkmenistan's southeastern Daulatabad gas field to the Indian city of Bikaner via Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The four countries, earlier, could not sign a gas sales and purchase agreement, a draft of which was prepared by Pakistan.

The draft deals with contractual obligations of the countries with regard to the pipeline's construction, security, gas tariffs and uninterrupted gas flows over the 30-year lifespan of the project.

The Asian Development Bank, which has offered to provide technical support to the project, has conducted a thorough feasibility study which says that the inclusion of India will be of great benefit not only for the project but for all stakeholders.