Turkmenistan to start building TAPI in 2017

Ex-Soviet country agreed to supply 1.3bcfd of natural gas to Pakistan.

NEW DEHLI: Turkmenistan – holder of the world’s fourth-largest natural gas reserves – expects to start constructing a pipeline to export gas to South Asian nations in 2017, a senior government official said on Sunday.

“Turkmenistan can construct its pipeline in its own territory in three years, but for other countries, it depends on their participation,” Kakageldy Abdullaev, acting minister of the Oil and Gas Industry, told reporters on the sidelines of the Petrotech energy conference.

Ex-Soviet Turkmenistan agreed in May to supply natural gas to Pakistan and India via Afghanistan by signing gas sales and purchase agreements with Pakistan’s Inter State Gas Systems and Indian state-run utility Gail.

It recently held roadshows for investors willing to take part in the US-backed, 1,735-kilometre Turkemistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline.

“The companies that we have met, they have no objection to financing,” Abdullaev said, but declined to say how many investors had made commitments.

He said on Monday that Bangladesh had asked to join the TAPI project.

“There was a request from Bangladesh to join the project. We require an official note which will be considered by all the four governments of the project,” Abdullaev said.

At the beginning of the project, Pakistan and India are expected to receive 1.365 billion cubic feet of gas per day (bcfd) and Afghanistan will be supplied 0.5 bcfd. The cost of the project was estimated to be $7.6 billion.

Pakistan will pay a transit fee of 50 cents per million cubic feet of gas per day (mmcfd) to Afghanistan and the same amount will be paid by India to Pakistan, under the proposed arrangement in April, 2012. The final agreement has yet to be signed.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 16^th, 2012.