Turkmenistan has told Pakistan it can supply enough natural gas to justify building a pipeline from the Central Asian state to Pakistan and India, adviser to prime minister on energy Mukhtar Ahmed said on Friday.
Pakistan is in active talks with Turkmenistan to build a pipeline that would run through Afghanistan, but it is also pursuing a plan to build a $7.4 billion pipeline from Iran that would also supply gas to India, the adviser said.
"We have been assured in writing by Turkmens that the required amount of gas will be made available notwithstanding these other commitments," Mukhtar said at a conference hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Centre.
"The credibility of these assurances is something we can talk about indefinitely," he said. Turkmenistan is also pursuing export deals with Russia, Ukraine, and China, raising questions whether it will have enough supplies for other customers. The Bush administration supports the Turkmen proposal but opposes the Iran plan because it has accused Tehran of attempting to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran denies.
"The rationale for the project is very strong," the adviser told Reuters in an interview. "We hope that at the end of the day everybody including our friends in the United States will be able to see the wisdom of implementing this project."
Future demand would justify both the Iran and Turkmenistan projects being built, he said. The pipeline through Pakistan would link Iran, which holds the globe's second-largest natural gas reserves behind Russia, to India. It would carry 150 million cubic meters per day of gas for 25 years.
Natural gas supplies from Turkmenistan hinge on its Dauletabad gas field, which contains a gigantic 4.5 trillion cubic meters in reserves, according to Turkmenistan's own estimates. Last year Turkmenistan appointed US-based consultants DeGoyler and MacNaughton and Gaffney, Cline & Associates, a British consultancy, as independent auditors of its oil and gas reserves.
"I have looked at numbers, which indicate that there is enough gas in the ground (in Turkmenistan) to support a 30-year project for Pakistan and India, Mukhtar said. "The numbers seem to be credible."
Turkmenistan produces just under 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year and exports two-thirds of that, mostly through an ex-Soviet pipeline that runs to Russia and for which it gets below-market prices.
Meanwhile officials from Pakistan, Iran and India will meet in New Delhi next month to negotiate gas pricing before finalising a deal to pipe Iranian gas to India through Pakistan. "We're discussing a number of project-related issues," the adviser told Reuters. "There is a whole range of issues including pricing."