Turkmenistan, Pakistan reach TAPI gas price agreement

[xchrom]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/MK10Ag01.html

MONTREAL - Pakistan and Turkmenistan have reportedly reached bilateral agreement over the price of gas through the planned Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline. An editorial in the national Pakistani newspaper The Dawn treats the agreement as an accomplished fact, and a former director-general of the Associated Press of Pakistan writes in the UAE-based Khaleej Times that the two sides will sign the agreement on November 15 in Ashgabat.

According to this credible but unconfirmed published information, Pakistan's price to Turkmenistan will be 69% of Brent crude oil parity price (including transit fee) for between 13 and 14 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/y). This figure could exceed 20 bcm/y


if a facility is constructed for export of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Pakistani port city of Gwadar in the southwest of the country.

Just a few days earlier India's president Pratibha Devisingh Patil, in his congratulations on the 20th anniversary of Turkmenistan's independence, expressed his happiness over the TAPI natural gas pipeline's "successful promotion". India, which signed a bilateral price accord with Turkmenistan some time ago, will receive the same quantity of gas as Pakistan (not counting the Gwadar extension), and Afghanistan will get 5 bcm/y.

Nor is this necessarily the upper limit. Turkmenistan's Oil and Gas Ministry concluded from a survey last year that by the end of the decade the total demand for natural gas in Pakistan and India together might reach as much as 186 bcm/y, whereas their indigenous production could not exceed 100 bcm/y, according to the independent Trend News Agency in Azerbaijan.



*** so you gotta wonder -- did cheney have ears in the room?

[nineteen50]

1. Who will build it? Who will

police it?

[xchrom]

2. I'm guessing Cheney knows. Nt