China to build Pak-Iran gas pipeline: Pak govt

Ahead of President Xi Jinping's visit here later this month, China has agreed to build a USD 2 billion pipeline that will transport natural gas from Iran to Pakistan to help ease the country's crippling power shortage, the government said today.
A deal to build the pipeline is to be signed during the Chinese president's visit to Islamabad this month, Pakistani officials said.
Xi was to visit Pakistan last year during his South Asia trip to India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives but postponed it due to political unrest in the country with opposition leader Imran Khan staging a protest in Islamabad against alleged rigging in the 2013 polls that were won by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's PML-N party.

The arrival of Xi is expected to showcase China's commitment to infrastructure development in ally Pakistan, at a time when few other countries are willing to make major investments in the cash-strapped, terrorism-hit country.
The pipeline would amount to an early benefit for both Pakistan and Iran from the framework agreement reached earlier this month between Tehran and the US and other world powers to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The US had previously threatened Pakistan with sanctions if it went ahead with the project.
"We're building it. The process has started," Pakistani Petroleum Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told the Wall Street Journal.

Dubbed the "Peace Pipeline", the project is expected to further bolster ties between Pakistan and Iran, uneasy neighbours for decades as a result of Pakistan's ties to Iran's long-term adversaries, Saudi Arabia and the US.
The pipeline will bring much-needed gas to Pakistan, which suffers from an acute electricity deficit because of a shortage of fuel for its power-generation plants.
Pakistan has been negotiating for months behind the scenes for China to build the Pakistani portion of the pipeline, which will cost up to USD 2 billion.