India left out of Iran-Pakistan pipeline deal

With the future energy crunch looming on many countries, Delhi’s decision not to engage Iran and Pakistan may be a huge blunder on its part. Being penny wise and pound foolish may come back and hound Bharat. With the $7.5 billion pipeline ready to start pumping gas in a couple of years, the economies of Pakistan and Iran will begin getting tied it—bringing the countries closer to each other in more than one way. Pakistan will primarily use the piped gas to produce electricity. All indications are the present energy crunch in Pakistan has woken up the entire population to such an extent that the government has had to produce results or be wept out of office.

Pipelinestan is becoming very important.

The current pipeline cannot be elongated to reach Bharat. If Bharat at some stage does decide to join in the project, a new pipeline will have to be laid—a remote prospect which probably has a slim to none chance of happening. The Pakistan-iran project is not subject to the sanctions because it was signed ahead of the UN resolutions. The sanctions wont be lifted in the near future, so no country will be able to take advantage of Iranian gas pipelines.

Pakistan’s next target is the TAP pipeline and then extending the TAP pipeline to China and perhaps stretching the Iran-Pakistan pipeline to China as well.

In any case, the economies of West Asia are getting more and more integrated with roads from Islamabad being built to Fergana and Dushambe. The Mughal emperor Babur would be proud of Islamabad

Tehran, Iran  – After years of negotiations, Iran and Pakistan have finally gone ahead and signed a $ 7.6 billion cross-border gas pipeline deal that would be operational in mid-2014. The third potential party to the project, India, was left out of the project.

The plan for the project was originally conceived in the 1990s but kept getting delayed because of various issues.

The deal was signed between Pakistani Inter-State Gas Limited’s Mohammad Naim Sharafat and Iranian Gas Export Co.’s Reza Kasaeizadeh.

The pipeline will deliver 750 million cubic feet of natural gas a day to Pakistan within four years. The pipeline will connect Iran’s giant South Pars gas fields with the troubled Pakistani provinces of Balochistan and Sindh. The gas pipeline, once operational, is expected to take care of as much as 20 per cent of Pakistan’s energy needs.

Talking to Iranian official news agency IRNA, Iranian oil minister Masood Mir-Kazemi said, “We explicitly announce that as a country having huge gas reserves, Iran will play a key role in guaranteeing global energy security in the future.”

After undertaking a feasibility study in the region, Pakistan will construct about 700 kilometers of the gas transmission network on its side of the border at Nawabshah, near Karachi at a cost of $ 1.65 billion. Iran has already built 900 kilometers of the pipeline within its territory.

India, which was a part of the project earlier, has been reluctant to get involved because of several issues: price of the gas, Islamabad’s reluctance to ensure safety of the pipeline on its soil and the high transit fee asked by Pakistan.

There are conflicting reports about whether India has withdrawn from the. While there has been no confirmation from India, Iranian media reported that New Delhi left the project last year. (AHN). Yamini Kaul – AHN News Contributor.

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