Pakistan to welcome India joining the project

ISLAMABAD: A day after Pakistan and Iran sealed the multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline deal after years of talks, Islamabad on Monday said it would welcome New Delhi joining the project and would guarantee safe delivery of natural gas to that country.

“We have kept open the option of India joining the project (at a later date). We will welcome India (in the project),” Muhammad Ejaz Chaudhry, Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources was quoted by Press Trust of India news agency as saying. “Yesterday (Sunday) we signed government guarantees, letters of comfort and condition precedents for the project,” he added.

In July last year Pakistan signed a gas sale and purchase agreement and in March this year it signed among other pacts a gas transportation agreement (GTA). The GTA provides for internationally acceptable transit arrangement for gas to be supplied to India.

“We will stand guarantee for safe delivery of gas (at Pakistan-India border),” Chaudhry said.

Of the 1,035km pipeline in Pakistan, only 100-odd kilometre would be exclusively for carrying gas to India while the rest would be transporting gas for both Pakistan and India, he said, adding that it was in Pakistan’s own interest to protect the pipeline.

Iran will supply 21.5 million cubic metres gas a day to Pakistan for 25 years. The deal can be extended by five years and the volume may be increased to 30 million cubic metres at Pakistan’s request.

“Pakistan will now start work on the pipeline from Iran-Pakistan border to its consumption centres,” Chaudhry said. “We expect first gas (from Iran) to flow by December 2014,” he said.

On the other side, Iran has started building the 300km leg of the pipeline from the southeastern city of Iranshahr to the Pakistani border, through the Iranian port of Chabahar.

Pakistan plans to use the gas purchased from Iran for its power sector, Chaudhry said.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 15^th, 2010