Pak, India to attend TAPI groundbreaking ceremony

Pakistan and India will attend a groundbreaking ceremony of the Turkmenistan section of the $10 billion TAPI gas pipeline project that will help ease energy shortages in South Asia, Pakistan Foreign Office said today.

The first leg of the ceremony to held in Serhetabat, Turkmenistan tomorrow will be attended by Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Malikgulyevich Berdimuhamedov, President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani and Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar, the Foreign Office said in a statement.

Abbasi will then proceed to Herat, Afghanistan to attend the Afghan leg of the groundbreaking ceremony, it said.

The ambitious natural gas pipeline project entered its practical phase in Pakistan after the process of initiating front-end-engineering-and-design (FEED) route survey was formally inaugurated last year.

Turkmenistan, which sits on the world's fourth-largest gas reserves, started building its section of the pipeline in December 2015.

The TAPI pipeline will have a capacity to carry 90 million standard cubic metres a day (mmscmd) gas for 30 years and is planned to become operational this year.

The project will will bring clean fuel to the growing economies of India and Pakistan. It will provide energy-hungry India gas to run its power plants.

Under the pipeline project, Pakistan and India will be provided 1.325 bcfd gas each and Afghanistan will be getting a share of 0.5 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) gas.