Pakistani Paper Renews Doubts over Key Turkmenistan Pipeline: A major Pakistani newspaper has argued that the long-stalled Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline (TAPI) is unlikely to be built anytime soon. The link is increasingly vital to Turkmenistan’s ambitions of being an independent force in the regional gas market, and reducing its dependence on its main buyer, China. But while all four countries have signed off on the project, there are a number of reasons it may not come to fruition, according to Dawn, one of Pakistan’s largest English dailies. There had been excitement in recent months that after years of talk, TAPI was entering the business stage. On the back of a four-country steering committee assisted by the Asian Development Bank in November, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov noted in December that “there is now no doubt that [TAPI] will be realized, moreover in the very foreseeable future.” European major Total and Malaysia’s Petronas are rumored to be interested in building the pipeline. But referring to the same steering committee meeting held in Ashgabat, Dawn notes the very earliest gas could be expected to flow is 2019, three years later than anticipated, and potentially too late for India. Given this delay, India has indicated revisiting its plan to be a part of the project; whether it would really need the gas from Turkmenistan after 2018 is questionable because it is already a major player in the Singapore LNG futures trading. read more eurasianet.org/node/71551
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 13:08:33 +0000
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