August 14, 2003	Thursday	Jumadi-us-Sani 15, 1424

ISLAMABAD, Aug 13: Pakistan has asked Turkmenistan to provide certificates of the original and any subsequent reserves studies of the Daulatabad gasfield carried out by an independent engineer of international repute, informed sources told Dawn.

Islamabad believes that unless there was complete information on the gasfield and its reserves are made available, no bank, independent lending institution or project sponsor would be willing to join the $3.5 Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) pipeline project.

Pakistan is of the view that even “the government of Pakistan finds it difficult to back up any buyer’s guarantee for the purchase of gas in the absence of the certification of reserves and other associated guarantees on allocation to the TAP project from the government of Turkmenistan,” says and official letter.

Also no project sponsor would be willing to enter into the Gas Transportation Agreement with Turkmenistan in the absence of the reserves certification.

Islamabad has also complained that Turkmen minister of oil and gas industry Tachberdi Tageiv had promised a presentation on the gas potential of the Daulatabad field on the sidelines of sixth steering committee meeting in Ashkabad, which remained unfulfilled.

These sources said Islamabad was asking the Turkmen government to facilitate a visit of a technical team from Pakistan for preliminary interaction with the experts from that country to review relevant data pertaining to the Daulatabad field.

Pakistan has also sought information relating to gas produced since the start of supplies from the field and the remaining recoverable reserves, information on dedication of the field reserves for any other buyer under a long term agreement and maximum gas processing capacity installed and the date of initial installation along with current production rates of pipeline quality gas.

It also wants information relating to future plans for installing additional production capacity and time schedule to meet the project gas flow requirements in phases starting from May 2008 at about 0.6-1 bcfd (billion cubic feet per day) to 2-2.5 bcfd by 2015.

Officials said the Asian Development Bank (ADB) would also formally reinitiate the expressions of interest (EOIs) for the project after the next steering committee meeting scheduled to be held in Islamabad in mid-October.

The ambassadors of some countries have started communications and meetings with the government officials to pursue the project, sources said. They said earlier around 40 companies had shown interest in the TAP project and some of them had even sought technical details of the project.

The parties to the project have already agreed to the Southern route for the project that starts from Daulatabad to Herat-Kandahar-Quetta and Multan.

The project also envisaged

gas storage facilities in Pakistan and establishment of an independent security agency to take care of the 1,700 km gas pipeline.

India currently required 5-6 billion cubic feet (bcf) per day of gas and the market would be growing even further. This indicated that perhaps India would be needing gas intakes from both the pipelines including from Iran and Turkmenistan.