Cool. :hula: Doesn’t it?
KABUL: Construction of a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and on to Pakistan could begin as early as mid-2004, officials said on Monday.
Senior officials from the three countries held a day of talks here during which they discussed details of the $4 billion project scuppered repeatedly in the past by war and occupation in Afghanistan.
“Improvements in Afghanistan have made conditions more favourable for it (the pipeline),” said Juma Mohammad Mohammadi, Afghanistan’s minister of mines and industries. When asked how Afghanistan would secure the pipeline from members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda network believed to be still active, he replied: “We are very hopeful about the future.”
H E Sethapathy Chander of the Asian Development Bank, which is financing a pipeline feasibility study, said financing for the project could be in place by mid-2004, a year after the study is complete. “We expect that the financial clause will take about a year after June of next year and the construction starting shortly thereafter,” he told a news briefing.
Usman Aminuddin, Pakistan’s minister for petroleum, called the plan a “mega-project” of the 21st century and voiced confidence that investors would not be hard to come by. He added that the pipeline could continue through Pakistan to another major energy consuming market in India.
The plan is to run a 1,460-km pipeline south from Turkmenistan’s vast Daulatabad-Donmez gas fields into western Afghanistan and then east to Pakistan and possibly beyond. The pipeline will supply 15 billion cubic meters of gas to Pakistan annually. A steering committee of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan would review the project and take decisions to materialise it in the near future.
