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Turkmen, Afghan, Pak leaders to sign $3.2b pipeline pact

ASHGABAT: Leaders from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan gathered here on Thursday to strike an ambitious deal to build a gas pipeline through war-ravaged Afghanistan.

The long-delayed $3.2-billion natural gas pipeline, known as the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline, would carry gas from energy-rich Turkmenistan to Pakistan. It would be one of the first major investment projects in Afghanistan in decades.

The project promises to give an economic boost to Afghanistan but lacks solid financial backing. Investors are leery of the risks of doing business in a country where U.S.-led coalition forces are still hunting down remnants of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Pakistani Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali and Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov were to meet for two days in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat to sign a framework agreement defining legal mechanisms for setting up a consortium to build and operate the pipeline. The pipeline would pump hundreds of millions of dollars into Afghanistan’s ruined economy and create 12,000 jobs there.

Pakistan would get more than US$300 million in transit fees annually and gain access to the gas.

“This gas pipeline project is good for the whole of the region,” Jamali told reporters before leaving for Ashgabat on his first visit abroad since coming to power last month.

Turkmenistan, which possesses the fifth largest gas reserves in the world, would get a badly needed alternative route for gas exports. In 1994 Russia refused to transport gas from this former Soviet republic via the pipelines running through its territory. The Asian Development Bank is carrying out a study for the 1,460-kilometer (910-mile) pipeline, which would tap into natural gas wells at Turkmenistan’s huge Dauletabad-Donmez field. The field holds more than 2.83 trillion cubic meters (100 trillion cubic feet) in gas reserves.

The pipeline would carry up to 20 billion cubic meters (700 billion cubic feet) of gas a year.

The US$1 million worth study approved last week by ADB directors is slated to begin next month and be complete in June 2003, after which work on setting up a consortium will begin.

The pipeline was originally launched in 1997 by a consortium led by US energy giant Unocal Corp but abandoned after the United States fired cruise missiles into Afghanistan in 1998 in ursuit of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network. The Afghan, Pakistani and Turkmen leaders relaunched the project at a meeting in May in Islamabad. The signing ceremony was originally scheduled for October but was postponed because Pakistani officials were busy forming a Cabinet and because of questions the Asian Development Bank raised about financial aspects of the plan.

The Japanese conglomerate Itochu has expressed interest in participating, but no company has joined the project. Unocal said it has no plans to do so.

India is the main potential buyer of the Turkmen gas that would be pumped through Afghanistan. But efforts to interest New Delhi in the project so far have been unsuccessful, with India reluctant to depend on its rival Pakistan. US Deputy Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones said earlier this year that Washington would support the project as long as it is commercially viable.

Skeptics say the project would require an indefinite foreign military presence in Afghanistan.

The summit comes a month after the Turkmen government reported an assassination attempt against Niyazov. The authoritarian leader has ruled the five-million Central Asian nation with an iron hand since before the Soviet collapse, maintaining state control over the country’s extensive energy resources. —AP

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