Iran: Pakistan firm on gas pipeline plan

Pakistan is firm on receiving gas from Iran through a pipeline, a senior official says, dismissing reports that Islamabad might have ditched the project.

“Islamabad has never given up purchasing Iranian gas,” Managing Director of the National Iranian Gas Exports Company (NIGEC) Alireza Kameli said on Sunday, Press TV reported.

Pakistan signed this month a 15-year agreement to import up to 3.75 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas a year from Qatar, prompting speculation that it might have abandoned the Iran project.

Kameli said, “LNG imports will not answer Pakistan’s demands and the country is naturally considering other options such as gas imports through the TAPI pipeline.”

TAPI gets its name from Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, a pipeline project worth $10 billion to pump natural gas to south Asia. It will be completed by December 2019 with a capacity of 33 billion cubic meters.

“Pakistan has to pay a high price to receive gas through this pipeline (TAPI); hence the ultimate cost of gas would be higher than Iranian gas,” Kameli told the Shana news agency.

The Iranian project would take gas to Pakistan without the need to cross more than 700 km through Afghanistan as TAPI requires.

Insecurity in Afghanistan which is facing a resurgent militancy and the region’s complex geopolitics has forced Western giants such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Total to refrain from committing to the project.

SS