Pakistan makes important development over the $8 billion Transnational TAPI pipeline project
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ISLAMABAD - Pakistan makes important development over the $8 billion Transnational TAPI pipeline project.
Pakistan is in the process of renegotiating the gas price with Tapi Project Company Limited (TPCL). Construction work will begin on Pakistan’s section of the multibillion-dollar transnational gas pipeline in Chaman after the negotiations.
“We are keen to have a new compatible gas price under the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (Tapi) project. Accordingly, renegotiations for the gas price will take place with TPCL before the start of work on the project in Pakistan,” a senior official privy to petroleum-sector developments told APP.
He is confident that Pakistan will complete phase-I of the project within 30 months after initiating groundwork for laying the pipeline from Chaman to Multan via Quetta and Dera Ismail Khan.
The project consists of two phases. The first phase will be completed at an estimated cost of $5-6 billion. In the second phase, compressor stations will be installed at a cost of $1.9-2 billion.
Under the project, he said, a 56-inch diameter pipeline spread over 1,680 kilometers with a capacity of transmitting 3.2 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of gas will be laid from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Pakistan-India border by the year 2022.
As per the Tapi agreement, Pakistan and India will be provided 1.325 bcfd of gas each and Afghanistan will receive 0.5 bcfd.
Answering a question, the official said that member countries of the project had signed an intergovernmental agreement and a gas pipeline framework agreement on December 11, 2010.
He said that Turkmenistan has already completed construction work on its section of the pipeline while Afghanistan had also performed groundbreaking of the project last year.
He stressed that Pakistan is contributing its committed share to the project activities, which made significant progress this year. A technical consultant has been appointed and the front-end engineering design has also been completed for Pakistan’s section of the project.
