Pakistan, Turkmenistan sign 4-nation gas pipeline implementation plan

KARACHI, Pakistan (AA): Pakistan and Turkmenistan on Thursday inked a “joint implementation plan” to execute the long-stalled four-nation energy corridor also involving Afghanistan and India.

State Minister of Turkmenistan Maksat Babayev and Pakistan’s Minister of State for Petroleum, Musaddiq Malik signed the “TAPI gas pipeline joint implementation plan” in Islamabad at a ceremony which was also attended by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

In an official statement, Sharif termed the project “very important” for the progress of the entire region.

This, he said, will help the region secure natural gas with concrete assurances and mutually agreed terms and conditions.

“We have to negotiate with this challenge through speedy action,” Sharif maintained, in an apparent reference to several delays in meeting the completion deadlines.

The much-delayed project had initially been signed in 2010 but was stalled because of technical and financial complications and disagreements, mainly between archrivals Pakistan and India.

In November last year, Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed to resume work on the project.

In January, Russia’s special envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov, in an interview with Russia 24 TV, said that Moscow was interested in joining the project.

The $7 billion project aims to bring natural gas from the Gylkynish and adjacent gas fields in Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is facilitating and coordinating the project, which is proposed to lay a 56-inch diameter 1,680-kilometer pipeline with a capacity of 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas per annum from Turkmenistan.