It was attended by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani along with Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Indian Vice President Muhammad Hamid Ansari in the middle of December. The 1,735 km gas pipeline project is expected to be ready by 2019. Nearly 200 kilometers of the pipeline will pass through the territory of Turkmenistan, 735 kilometers through Afghanistan, 800 kilometers through Pakistan and will reach Fazilka in India.

Launching the project, Ansari said TAPI is a great example of regional cooperation and the pipeline will export up to 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India over 30 years.

Notwithstanding the tension in the region particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the project has taken off recognising the economic expediency to bring about energy security in the region, at a time when global crude oil prices are falling. The project at one point of time was almost called off because of security concerns and there was so much scepticism that several experts had predicted that it would remain a non-starter.

This has proved doom-sayers wrong though it had taken several years of hard negotiations particularly because of uncertain and difficult geo-political situation in the region. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani succinctly summed up this great regional cooperation by calling the event historic as the region was ‘renewing ties’ and ‘overcoming the history of doubt and scepticism’.

Though the project was conceived as early 1995, India got into it acively when it was formally admitted as a member only in 2008 when globala crude oil prices surged to a historic high of $147 a barrel before begining to fall following global financial crisis triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the United States. The global oil prices shot up again to $115 a barrel before failling to around $33 a barrel at the moment. This may not last long and a country like India which depends on imports for 80 per cent of its oil and gas requirement needed to find more cheaper and sustainable sources for bringing about energy security of the country.

So in the last 10 years, TAPI has been one of the main agenda items at every major conference on Afghanistan and also an integral part of the American ‘New Silk Road Strategy’. It is expected that the pipeline could now be operational in the next four years. TAPI is designed to transport 33 billion cubic metres of gas annually to South Asia for a period of 30 years.

Gulshan Sachedeva, who is director at JNU's energy studies programme has rightly analysed the benefits that this project would bring about to India and the region, though the multinational oil companies were not interested in the project.

In fact starting with Bridas, Unocal and Delta during the Taliban regime in the 1990s, many energy giants such as Chevron, Exxon and BP showed interest in the project. More recently, Total and Dragon Oil were in discussion with the Turkmenistan government.

But one of them committed to the project due to security and financial considerations. Also there was reluctance on the part of Turkmenistan government to sign production-sharing rights for onshore blocks with foreign companies because their domestic laws did not permit it.

This made the four countries find a solution within and rightly they agreed to a consortium of national oil companies of all four participating countries, with Turkmengaz, the national oil company of Turkmenistan, as the consortium leader. Gas Authority of India Limited is the Indian partner.

Vice President Hamid Ansari, who represented India at the event in Mary rightly called it ‘more than a project’ and ‘first steps towards unification of the region’. Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan also signed an MoU for a power transmission line. The line will be constructed parallel to the TAPI gas pipeline. There are also plans to connect the four countries by a parallel fibre optic cable. For this reason Ghani called it a “super highway of cooperation and coordination that will connect again South Asia and Central Asia together”.

Some of the North Indian States like Himachal Pradesh has surplus power and so also Western state of Gujarat. Once the power transmission line is established, these power surplus states can earn valuable foreign exchange by exporting electricity to power deficit countries like Pakistan and Afthanistan. This will strengthen economic cooperation, thereby promote people-people contact. This will also greatly help in defusing tension and improve security. This will also provide opportunity to wean away youth in those regions from terrorism by creating much needed employment.

The strategic significance of the project is huge. Once completed, TAPI can become a game changer in regional geopolitics and regional economic integration. Due to significant transit revenues, it also has the potential to smoothen the ‘Decade of Transformation’ (1915-2014) for Afghanistan. If the project is completed successfully, it could bring together India’s ‘Connect Central Asia’ policy and China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) of the Chinese ‘One Belt One Road’ project.

Due to China’s slowdown and the cut down of Russian gas purchases, the market dynamics of the Central Asian gas market are changing significantly. Turkmenistan exports gas to China, Russia and Iran. Both Russia and Iran have reduced their imports as they want to increase their own output. This will make China the sole export market for Turkmen gas. These factors might have pushed Turkmenistan to develop alternatives. And South Asia could be a winner in this changing geo-economics.

The pipeline will be 1,420 millimetres in diameter with a working pressure of 100 standard atmospheres. Six compressor stations would be constructed along the pipeline.

Originally, the cost of the pipeline project was reportedly estimated at US$7.6 billion, but a more recent estimate was $10 billion.The Asian Development Bank has played a leading role in coordinating and facilitating the TAPI negotiation process.

The project has now become a reality and it will be a great boon to all the four countries bringing new way of economic cooperation aimed at bringing in much needed energy security and jobs to the poor people of the region. (IPA Service)