Leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India during a ceremony in the Turkmen desert broke ground Sunday on a major pipeline that could help ease energy deficits in South Asia.
Presidents Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan and Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan were on hand for the ceremony outside the city of Mary in the Karakum Desert, marking the beginning of work on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) link.
They were joined by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan and Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, an AFP correspondent reported from the scene. "Today we were participants and witnesses of a historic event. Today marks the start of a project of great scale - the TAPI pipeline," said Berdymukhamedov at the ceremony, held in a pavilion imitating a traditional Turkmen nomadic dwelling.
"TAPI is designed to become a new effective step towards the formation of the modern architecture of global energy security, a powerful driver of economic and social stability in the Asian region," he added.
Turkmenistan has earlier said it expects the gas link with an annual capacity of 33 billion cubic metres to be fully operational by the end of 2018.
However uncertainty hangs over the project, whose cost is estimated at $10 billion (9.0 billion euros).
Aside from the risks associated with a link traversing war-torn Afghanistan, the four-country consortium has yet to confirm the participation of a major foreign commercial partner willing to help finance TAPI.
Berdymukhamedov noted that Sunday also marked the beginning of the third phase of development of the Galkynysh gas field which will provide the resource base for the TAPI project. The next phase of development at Galkynysh - the second largest natural gas field in the world - will be overseen by a consortium of Japanese and Turkish companies in addition to Turkmenistan, Berdymukhamedov said.
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