Monday, April 23, 2012 -
The three gas-buying project partners of the trans-regional TAPI pipeline achieved a breakthrough agreement on a transit fee Friday, a top Pakistani energy official said.
Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan signed a single transit fee rate for all three stakeholders for natural gas supplied by Turkmenistan through the 1,056-mile pipeline during talks in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
Speaking to a press conference later, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Asim Hussain termed the consensus a “milestone” agreement, the Islamabad-based Express Tribune news agency reported.
“India will pay 49.5 cents per MMBTU as transit fee each to Afghanistan and Pakistan. And Pakistan will pay the same to Afghanistan only. India has already signed the gas sales purchase agreement with Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan is to sign the gas price deal with the seller country [soon],” Hussain told the journalists.
“Pakistan is due to get $217 million in transit fees from India which will be paid to Afghanistan,” he added.
The $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline is designed to transit 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas through the pipeline annually from the supergiant Dauletabad field in Turkmenistan in Central Asia to the three recipient countries.
Hussain said the TAPI steering committee will convene in Turkmenistan on May 24 to hold a final round of talks on the project.