Trans-Afghan pipeline project set to bring gas to India

Tuesday, 18 January 2005, 20:30 IST
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ALMATY: Turkmenistan has said a feasibility study for a trans-Afghan pipeline that will bring natural gas to India has been completed, reports Xinhua. Turkmenistan's Oil and Gas Ministry said construction of the long-delayed project could begin in 2006. The feasibility study, funded by the Asian Development Bank and conducted by the British company Penspen, "serves to speed up" the plan for a trans-Afghan gas pipeline to the Indian city of Fazilka, near the Pakistan-India border. The study envisages a 1,680-metre-long pipeline that could carry 33 billion cubic metres of gas per year, the ministry said. The $3.5-billion pipeline is to run through Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan, the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Multan and on to Fazilka in India. The feasibility study for the project, which is planned to be launched in 2006, was expected to be discussed in February in Islamabad at a meeting of the project's managing committee, the ministry said. Gas-rich Turkmenistan has long hoped for a southern pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan as a way of reducing dependence on the pipeline network through Russia. But plans were abandoned when the US fired cruise missiles into Afghanistan in 1998 in pursuit of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. Since the collapse of the Taliban regime, the project has been revived. The planned pipeline would allow former Soviet Central Asian nations to export energy resources without relying on Russian routes.
Source: IANS