On 20-25 April, Turkmen energy minister Baimyrat Khodzamuhammedov visited Islamabad where he took part in the 10^th meeting of steering committee of Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project. Apart from him, the meeting gathered Indian, Pakistani and Afghan officials. Few days later, on April 28th Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov traveled to Kabul (first time in independent Turkmenistan’s 17-years history) where he discussed details of this project with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai. Both visits indicated Turkmenistan growing interest in TAPI, despite the fact that the realization of this project is still questionable. I wonder what are the project chances to be realized.

TAPI project assumes construction of a gas pipeline from Turkmen gas field Dovletebad (located in the southern part of the country), then the route passes through the Afghan cities of Herat and Kandahar before entering Pakistan at Quetta and proceeding to the Indian border town of Fazilka. At the initial stage, the capacity of the pipeline would be 33bmc (in the future it could be raised to approximately 70bcm of gas). The cost of the project is estimated between 6-7.5bn USD.

There are several factors that move forward realization of the project. Firs of all, as the recent visits indicate, Ashgabat seems to be very interested in implementation of the project mainly because that would help to diversify gas exports routes. In addition, TAPI is being supported by Asian Development Bank and the USA which are against a competitive project from Iran. Also, India and Pakistan are energy hungry and they are determined to secure gas supplies.

On the other hand, there is a bunch of obstacles for the project’s realization. Dovletebad gas field is a main resources base for gas exported to Russia so the protest of Kremlin are more then probable. The question is what Moscow will do to ban this project. and I would not expect Kremlin just to stay and watch how the pipeline to India is being built. Moreover, the route passes through the regions in Afghanistan where the militants are still operating. TAPI is also a rival project for Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline (IPI) which is strongly promoted by Iran. There is also a gas prices issue. According to Turkmen report, the parties failed to reach a consensus over gas prices in Islamabad and only decided that the prices should be based on “conjuncture on the international markets”.

I’m still a little bit confused when it comes to appraise the chances for the project realization. I think that it can not be realized now or in the near future because of the security reasons. I would be more optimistic in a long-term perspective, especially if the situation in Afghanistan would stabilized.