Turkmenistan gas pipeline moves closer to reality

The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline project has moved closer to realisation with petroleum ministry set to approach the cabinet for approval of Gas Sales and Purchase Agreement (GSPA) between GAIL and Tukmen Gaz for delivering hydrocarbon at Fazilka in Punjab.

Updated on: Feb 9, 2012, 22:44:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline project has moved closer to realisation with petroleum ministry set to approach the cabinet for approval of Gas Sales and Purchase Agreement (GSPA) between GAIL and Tukmen Gaz for delivering hydrocarbon at Fazilka in Punjab.

The much-needed Turkmen gas will be available for 30 years and address long term energy needs of India as domestic gas availability beyond 2020 has not been established.

Government sources said the National Security Council Secretariat, however, has added a rider to ministry's proposal saying that possibility of China participating in the consortium for finance, design and implementation of the project would not be in Indian's interest.

The NSCS is of the view that security of the pipeline was of critical consideration in order to assess long term viability of the project. The pipeline, which would pass through politically unstable states, will evacuate some 411.173 billion cubic metres of gas from South Yolotan-Osman gas field within five years of signing of the 30-year GSPA.

During the 9th bilateral meeting held between Indian and Turkmenistan ministers in the Capital on Oct 12, 2011, the projected gas base price was agreed by New Delhi after removal of the price review clause. The price of Turkmen gas is expected to be between the LNG and domestic gas price but this gap could reduce further if domestic gas price rises after KG-D6 block come up for revision after 2014.

Although there are geopolitical risks in the project, if India is able to cover its risks and get environmental friendly methane gas delivered at Pakistan-India border, then the long term gas availability in north India at a reasonable price will be beneficial to economy in the long run.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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