Pleading for Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar has written to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh suggesting 'conversation without commitment' among the petroleum ministers of the three countries.
In his letter written to the prime minister, Aiyar said: "With respect to the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, the Iranian oil minister has conveyed to me, through his ambassador, an informal suggestion for 'conversation without commitment' between the petroleum ministers of these three countries. I discussed this with the External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh, who is himself favourably inclined, but asked me to first take this up with you", according to a news report carried by a leading daily, Indian Express.
Similar proposals have been made in the past, but they died away because of a security concerns involving Pakistan, the report said, adding now Aiyar has written to the prime minister suggesting a novel approach calling it 'conversation without commitments.'
Backing up his proposal with an overview of the energy situation to show just how pressing the need for radical solutions is, Aiyar pointed out that while India's crude oil production will rise no more than 50 million tonnes over the next two years, its requirement could touch 300 million tonnes if it is to sustain a 7-8 percent growth in GDP.
The answer, he argued, would be to access gas wherever possible. Domestically, the needs cannot be met as the production is stuck at 90 million standard cubic metres of gas per day, while the requirement has already crossed 120 million cubic metres.
Twenty years down the road, the requirement could touch 391 million cubic metres. "It would be in our larger national interest to encourage this demand to grow to lower the appetite for crude," added the report quoting the letter.
In fact, to push the proposal forward, Aiyar is willing to discard even the oft-trotted South Bloc line - that if Pakistan is interested in seeing the pipeline running through its land, it must grant most-favoured nation status to imports from India, maintained the report.
"Important, indeed crucial as these issues are to our economy, the gains from these pale in comparison to the massive gains which our country would secure from accessing Iranian gas through Pakistan", he further reasoned.
Apart from having such conversations with Pakistan and Iran, the minister has suggested starting talks on similar lines with Bangladesh and Myanmar on he one hand and Turkmenistan and Afghanistan on the other.
"If we are able to link up a pipeline through Pakistan with a pipeline through Bangladesh, not only would we have a national grid for international gas, our two neighbours might be drawn into a network of South Asian co-operation", he observed.