Indian Panel Asks Ministry to Speed up Iran-Pak-India Pipeline

A Parliamentary panel has asked the India’s Petroleum Ministry to speed up issues related to much-delayed Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline project as it would bring significant amount of gas in the country.

The Daily Pioneer has reported that the Standing Committee on Petroleum and Natural Gas in its report submitted to Parliament during the ongoing Monsoon session, has sought the earliest possible start for the project as it has been informed by the Petroleum Ministry that the last concrete dialogue on IPI project was held in November 2009.

Issues like delivery point, structure of the project in Pakistan, transportation tariff and transit fee have been discussed in bilateral talks with that and discussions with Iran are pending.

Apart from the IPI project, India is also pursuing the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project. Both IPI and TAPI have gas transporting capacities of 60 and 90 mmscmd respectively.

Though for TAPI project, the Government has recently settled the gas sale purchase agreement and bilateral negotiations are on with Turkmenistan for gas pricing and with Pakistan and Afghanistan for finalising transit fee, it is mainly the IPI project, which is stuck in limbo.

The newspaper said that Indian government had confirmed that it is open about taking up the issue with Tehran, though no time frame for deliberations on it is there.

The IPI Project which was conceived in mid 90s could not take off due to security issues failure to arrive at an agreement with Pakistan on transmission charges.

In June 2010, both Iran and Pakistan signed a series of agreements for kickstarting the project, which would result in Iran supplying natural gas to Pakistan from 2014 onwards.

India’s confidence seems to have stemmed from the fact that even Iran has not completely given up on partnering with New Delhi on the ambitious project.