US must aid India energy sector to prevent it cosying to Iran

The US should help India increase its share of nuclear and renewable energy to prevent it from entering into a deal for gas with Iran, an American security analyst has said, terming the recent Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline deal as a "diplomatic setback".      

"It is in the interest of the US to help India increase its share of nuclear power and renewable energy while constructing liquefied natural gas terminals along the coasts of the Indian subcontinent to allow diversity of supply," Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security wrote in his latest column.      

Otherwise, he said India might end up receiving oil and gas from Iran, extending Tehran's influence to South Asia — a prospect the US would never like, Luft said.      

"Without active US participation in the effort to alleviate India's energy poverty, Iran could soon become to India what Russia is to Europe," he said.      

"For the Obama administration, the signing of the pipeline deal (between Iran and Pakistan) is a diplomatic setback which could undermine its policy of weakening Iran economically," Luft said.      

Expressing satisfaction that India did not join the pipeline project, which he said has been a victim of the Mumbai terror attack, Luft said the situation in South Asia could change as India's "energy crunch" deepens.

"The deterioration in the India-Pakistan relations following the terror attacks in Mumbai has effectively taken the project off the table.      

"But this could easily change in the future as India's energy crunch deepens: some 400 million Indians already suffer from energy poverty," Luft said.      

The Obama administration should preempt this by increasing energy cooperation with India, Luft wrote.      

"Pressure on India to curtail its use of coal for power generation may help reduce carbon emissions, but it could force India to shift to cleaner burning natural gas and hence drive it right into the welcoming arms of Iran," he said.      

According to Luft, Iran sees in the pipeline project not only an economic lifeline... But also an opportunity should the pipeline be extended to India, to create an unbreakable long-term political and economic dependence of one billion Indian customers on its gas.