Gas from Central Asia

The symbolic ground-laying for the construction of the gas pipeline that will link Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, was begun in Turkmenistan Sunday, with vice-president Hamid Ansari attending from the Indian side. Given the strong influence of the unpleasant geopolitical reality of international terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, through which bulk of the 1,840-km pipeline will pass, only an optimist will believe that the TAPI channel will be operational by 2018, as planned.

But if the $10 billion project to extract and export Caspian Sea gas, anchored by the Asian Development Bank, can be pulled off, India will be hugely benefited. The Indian economy is consuming energy at a rapid rate and Turkmen gas will become a handily available resource. Afghanistan and Pakistan will earn handsome rents for letting the raw material pass through their territories.

Turkmenistan is the world’s fourth largest gas producer. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, of which present-day Turkmenistan was a part, the United States was loathe to let Turkmen gas pass through Russia’s grid, and encouraged its evacuation in a southwardly direction, even holding talks with the then Taliban government in Afghanistan in late 1990s for this purpose.

Should the threat of terrorism make it impossible to carry on with the project, letting the gas pass through Iran is an option. But that will entail a last-mile journey through the sea for the commodity to reach India. That could change the costing. The US too could raise practical objections on account of the Iran factor.