India, Iran discuss underwater gas line bypassing Pak

India, Iran discuss underwater gas line bypassing Pak

 

NEW DELHI: The prospect may not have sounded feasible initially, but India is now coming round to the idea of having an underwater gas pipeline with Iran which would allow it to bypass Pakistan.

As India's participation in IPI pipeline remains bogged down by concerns over security and pricing, official sources said New Delhi has already discussed building a pipeline under Arabian Sea with Tehran.

According to officials, the underwater pipeline will not just help India evade Pakistan but also allow government to engage Iran in a more fruitful manner. In fact, when Turkmenistan president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov visited India last month, the two sides discussed the prospect of transporting gas from Turkmenistan to northern Iran with help from India and using the underwater pipeline option to transport gas to India from southern Iran.

The Turkmenistan president was also very keen on initiating work on the proposed TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline but New Delhi is not very enthused about the project because of the instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The head of the supervisory board of South Asia Gas Enterprise Private Ltd (SAGE), T H P Pao, had earlier said that India and Iran had discussed building this pipeline which would be about 700 miles in length. Because of the high costs involved, the construction of a deep sea pipeline in the past has been considered financially unviable.

With India not participating, Pakistan and Iran have gone ahead with IPI pipeline which will connect South Fars gas field of Iran, home to one of the largest gas reserves in the world, with Balochistan in Pakistan.

The two countries are likely to finalise the agreement this week. Foreign minister S M Krishna, who visited Tehran last month, has maintained that India is still holding discussions with Iran over IPI pipeline. He has also said that India will participate only if concerns over security and pricing are addressed adequately.