TAPI meeting to take place in Turkmenistan today

A delegation led by Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Petroleum, Nadeem Babar, left for Turkmenistan to attend a meeting on Sunday evening on the development of Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, also known as Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.

Groundbreaking of the TAPI gas pipeline will be held in Pakistan in October this year, sources told Geo News. The Pakistani delegation is travelling to Turkmenistan to finalise the plans for the groundbreaking of the project, sources said.

The TAPI gas pipeline project is expected to be completed by 2022 in Pakistan.

The TAPI project, supported by the United States and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), has been supported by Turkmenistan since the 1990s. But the initiation of the project was delayed due to issues related to the instability in the region, especially in Afghanistan.

The ADB is acting as the facilitator and coordinator for the project. It is proposed to lay a 56-inch diameter and 1,680-kilometre pipeline with a capacity of transporting 33 billion cubic meters (BCM) of natural gas per annum from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Fazilka near the India-Pakistan border, Geo News reported.

The pipeline will run through areas of southern Afghanistan largely controlled by the Taliban.

However, Kabul has assured that no hindrance will be caused to the project, which will benefit Afghanistan with five billion cubic meters of the gas itself, while the rest would be divided between India and Pakistan.