Pak-Afghan-Turkmenistan gas talks

Islamabad: Negotiations on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) gas pipeline project will be held in Islamabad on April 22 and 23, sources in the Petroleum Ministry told Daily Times on Sunday. Turkmenistan would present a third-party certification of its gas reserves during the talks, they said.

Turkmenistan claims to have gas reserves of 159 trillion cubic feet (TCF) at its Daulatabad fields, but Pakistan wants a third-party certification. Issues of project structure, security problems in Afghanistan, transit fee and gas pricing would be also discussed, sources said.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) had earlier scheduled the talks for November 27 and then for February 23 and 24, they added, but other stakeholders were reluctant to join in, apparently due to emergency rule and then a caretaker setup in Pakistan.

They said the estimated cost of the proposed project was $6 billion to $7 billion. The ADB is the main sponsor, they added, but tenders would also be invited from other investors.

“Oil companies like Shell and British Petroleum Company will also be invited to participate in the project,” a source said.

Although India seems to be distancing itself from the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project, it could join the TAP project as the fourth stakeholder, the sources said.

India has earlier been participating as an observer in talks between Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The sources said Pakistan would import 3.2 billion cubic feet of gas from Turkmenistan and would share some of it with India.

A 1,680-kilometre pipeline will run from the Daulatabad gas fields through Afghanistan and Quetta to Multan, according to the proposed project.