Nine years on, work on Gwadar airport terminal to begin ‘soon’

Civil Aviation Authority says 4,300 acres of land for the project has been acquired.

QUETTA: About half a century ago, Pakistan paid $3 million to the Sultanate of Oman for an enclave – a hammerhead-shaped peninsula that juts into the Arabian Sea, off the Makran Coast – called Gwadar.

Five decades on, Oman has given Pakistan $17 million to set up an international airport, and realise Gwadar’s dormant potential.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has acquired 4,300 acres of land for the proposed Gwadar Airport and would soon start construction on the largest airport terminal in the province, Director-General (DG) CAA  Air Marshal (retd) Khalid Chaudhry said on Sunday.

Meanwhile, $17 million have been received from Oman for this project, DG CAA informed provincial Chief Secretary Mir Ahmed Bakhsh Lehri while briefing him about the project.

The new airport at Gwadar will be equipped with facilities both for passengers and cargo handling, the director-general told the chief secretary.

Straddling the water and air passages

Perched at the confluence of Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, Gwadar’s strategic significance lies in its location. It sits at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, the only sea passage to the open ocean for most oil-exporting Gulf countries.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, a subsidiary of US Department of Energy, daily oil flow through Hormuz amounted to 15.5 million barrels in 2009. In perspective, that was roughly 33% of all sea-borne traded oil, or 17% of oil traded worldwide that year.

A greenfield, international airport at Gwadar was conceived almost a decade ago when former President Pervez Musharraf started work on a deep water sea port in the city in 2002. The sultanate of Oman made a commitment at the onset to finance the project.

While the sea port was completed five years later, and became operational in 2008, work on the airport has yet to commence. At present, a small terminal offers limited local and international connectivity.

Gwadar’s geographic advantage is not just limited to sea. It lies on the air traffic corridor between Europe and South-East Asia. The presence of three major global hubs in close proximity – at Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha – is testament to opportunities that lie ahead for Gwadar airport.

According to independent economists, if over-flight facilities are granted to international airlines for refuelling at Gwadar International Airport, it will provide stiff competition to other airports in the region.

The provincial government realises Gwadar’s importance, and as such, Chief Minister Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani has already declared the city the ‘winter capital’ of Balochistan, the chief secretary informed the director-general.

The airport project is part of the government’s plan to enhance the deep sea port’s potential, he added.

(With additional input from news desk)

Published in The Express Tribune, November 21^st, 2011.