With the recent terrorists strike on Mumbai and the pressure building up against Pakistan allegedly for assisting militants, the fate of $7.5 billion Iran Pakistan India (IPI) pipeline and $7.6 billion Turkmenistan Afganistan Pakistan India pipeline is quite uncertain. In fact, the Centre, which has already indicated that it does not rule out military action against Pakistan, proposes to trade cautiously on the implementation of these pipelines.
As reported by FE on November 11, the implementation of these pipelines has been marred by political, financial and physical problems. Sources told FE on Wednesday, ?The situation is quite volatile after the last week?s terrorists attack in Mumbai. The Centre has taken a tough posture against Pakistan and against such drop it will be better to move cautiously on the implementation of Tapi and IPI.?
It must be mentioned here that a high-level delegation led by petroleum minister Murli Deora in the first week of November to Turkmenistan held crucial meetings to sort out various issues. Thereafter, the issue also came up for discussion at the 12 CIS countries held on November 25 and 26 in New Delhi.
According to sources, Pakistan and Turkmenistan are yet to resolve issues relating to the certification and this was also confirmed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) which is financially supporting the Tapi pipeline. Besides, India has yet to receive certification from Turkmenistan for making headway. Turkmenistan has 7.3 trilling cubic meters of gas reserves.
Under the Tapi project, Turkmenistan is expected to supply 3.2 bcfd of gas that is to be shared between Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.
As far as IPI pipeline project is concerned, India and Pakistan are yet to arrive at a formula over the Pakistan?s demand for transit fee for the gas passing from its boundry. Under the IPI pipeline project, Iranian gas will be brought to India via Pakistan. India does not want to take any risk on the security matters and thus wants to sort out these issues before moving ahead.
