Daily Times, Pakistan
Sunday, December 18, 2005
IPI pipeline to be built from 2007
By Iftikhar Gilani
NEW DELHI: Pakistan and India hope to start building a $7 billion gas pipeline from Iran by 2007 despite objections from the United States, top officials from both countries said on Saturday.
"We have made significant progress. We hope to complete the project by 2010," Pakistan's Petroleum Secretary Ahmad Waqar told reporters at the conclusion of a two-day meeting of the Joint Working Group (JWG) on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline in New Delhi.
Waqar's Indian counterpart, Petroleum Secretary SC Tripathi, said talks had gained momentum. "We have made significant progress. We are now talking about details of the project," he said.
Waqar said the 2,100-km pipeline would initially bring 90 million cubic metres a day of gas, a third of it for Pakistan and the rest for India. The volume would be raised to 150 million cubic metres in 3-4 years, with Pakistan doubling its share to 60 million cubic metres. "The project structure (how the project will be built and operated) and the framework agreement (the agreement between India, Pakistan and Iran on the pipeline) will be finalised by April 2006," Tripathi said. Waqar said a technical sub-working group would be set up to sort out issues like transportation tariff, transit fees payable to Pakistan, system configuration, pipeline route and pricing mechanism. The sub-group will meet every month to resolve the issue before the next JWG meeting in early March 2006.
About the route of the pipeline, Waqar said the preferred one was Bohang in Rahimyar Khan, 100 kilometres wast of India. Oil ministers from both countries plan to meet in New Delhi in February to review progress in the project, a joint press statement said. India, Pakistan and Iran would also discuss the project at another meeting in Tehran, also in February, the first trilateral meeting on the project, it added.
India has also been invited to the 9th Steering Committee Meeting for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline project in Ashghabad in January 2006 and will attend as an observer, the statement said.
Nicholas Burns, a top official of the US State Department, said last month India had assured the United States that any plans to sign energy deals with Iran were "years away" and existed only in the hypothetical realm. But officials said talks to build the pipeline were progressing well. "We shall go ahead," Waqar said when asked to comment on US objections to the project.
The statement released by the two sides after the JWG meeting said that Pakistan would appoint a financial advisory consortium on the project shortly. The Pakistani side also conveyed that Islamabad had formally acceded to the Energy Charter Treaty as an observer.
The proposal to build the pipeline has been on the drawing board for years but uneasy relations between Pakistan and India prevented any progress. Indian officials are also concerned the project would take gas across volatile areas of Pakistan where other pipelines have been attacked in the past.
Peace talks between India and Pakistan revived hopes for the pipeline two years ago but the project faces opposition from the United States, which accuses Iran of seeking nuclear arms, funding anti-Israeli militias and stirring militant attacks against US forces in Iraq.