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| New Delhi and Islamabad today agreed to set up a joint committee to discuss issues and modalities for getting the $4.16-billion Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project off the ground by January 2006. The project aims at bridging the huge energy deficit in the two countries. |
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| The joint working group (JWG), to be headed by the petroleum secretaries of India and Pakistan, will look into the technical, commercial, financial and legal issues related to the project. |
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| If terms and the roadmap decided by the JWG are accepted by India and Pakistan, gas from the 2,600-km long pipeline, 760-km of which will pass through Pakistan, will start flowing from early 2010. Iran which, at present, is not a part of the JWG, will join the discussions at a later stage. This will convert the project into a trilateral agreement. |
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| "The pipeline looks like a certainty now," India's Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, who called on Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, told reporters here. |
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| Aziz, too, expressed the hope that both Pakistan and India give top priority to the early completion of the project. |
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| India hopes to source 90-100 million standard cubic meters per day of gas through the Iran-India pipeline, while Pakistan plans to tap another 50-60 mmscmd of gas from the pipeline. |
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| Pakistan, which presently is able to meet all its demand of 110 mmscmd gas from domestic fields, will have a gas deficit of 10 mmscmd by 2010-11 and 60 mmscmd by 2015. |
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| By 2025, India's gas deficit will scale to over 200 mmscmd, while Pakistan's gas deficit will reach 200-300 mmscmd. To fulfil its future demand, India is now eager to join the ADB-sponsored Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) gas pipeline. |
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| Aiyar said since the work on the Iran-Pakistan-Iran pipeline had begun earlier, it would be taken up first, followed by TAP. |
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| He said TAP would be converted to the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline. Aziz, he said, expressed "our common desire to carry forward the discussion initiated here in Islamabad". |
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| Pakistan's Petroleum Minister Amanullah Khan Jadoon will visit Delhi by June end or early July for further talks on the security and transit issue relating to the pipeline. Aiyar will again visit Islamabad in October or November to give shape to the pipeline matrix. |
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| In the JWG, Delhi hopes to make Iran and Pakistan accountable for the delivery of gas to India. It will also focus to fix accountability in case of default, besides working out a kind of international consortium that will build and maintain the pipeline and its financing pattern. |
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| India will also seek to address security issues and responsibilities of all the three parties through the joint panel. |
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