The four-country multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline, which was launched on Sunday by the top leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, is expected to help ease energy deficits in South Asia and stem tensions in the divided region, but analysts are saying ensuring security of it remains a big concern.
Presidents Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan and Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan attended the ceremony in the Karakum desert outside the southeastern Turkmen city of Mary, 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.
Energy experts say the project does indeed have potential to ease relationships in the divided region.
“TAPI is a challenging project, partly because of these bilateral tensions,” said Charles Hendry, Britain’s former energy and climate change minister, is quoted by news agency Agence France-Presse.
“But I think it is precisely this kind of big multi-state project that can bind countries together geopolitically,” Hendry, also chairman of London-based Eurasia Partners consultancy, .
Turmen authorities said the launching also marks the third phase of development of the Galkynysh gas field, the world’s second largest gas reserve, which will provide the resource base for the TAPI pipeline.
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, energy officials of the country confirmed.
Security risks
Uncertainty hangs over the costly TAPI project, however, with both security and the lack of a major commercial investor stymieing optimism.
“Initially the questions were about whether Turkmenistan had enough gas and whether the demand was there in India and Pakistan,” Luca Anceschi, a Central Asia expert at the University of Glasgow, said.
“With the assessment of the Galkynysh field and the situation in both those countries, those questions have now been answered positively. But the question of security is one that really hangs over the project and increases its costs.”
Several major Western energy firms have appeared to back away from the project, with only Dubai-based Dragon Oil, which works in Turkmenistan’s petroleum sector, confirming interest.
Nevertheless, a spokeswoman for the company’s Turkmenistan office said in emailed comments last month that “nothing had formally been decided” regarding its participation in the project.
The isolated Central Asian state has shown increasing will to get the project off the ground amid a worrying dependence on China, which imports around three-quarters of its national gas output via the Central Asia-China pipeline, completed at the end of 2009.
Turkmenistan once suffered from a similar dependence on Russia, which was the country’s main customer before China came to the fore.
But Moscow’s energy giant Gazprom announced its intention to wind down purchases of Turkmen gas and was blasted in a Turkmen government publication as an “unreliable partner” this year amid ongoing contractual disputes.