KUALA LUMPUR, June 13: A decision on the multi-billion-dollar pipeline between Iran and India that will run across Pakistan will be made in two weeks, an Iranian official said on Monday. “We will make an announcement in two weeks,” Reza Amrollahi, Iran’s senior deputy energy minister told reporters on the sidelines of the two-day Asia Oil and Gas conference.
Pakistani minister for petroleum Amanullah Khan Jadoon had invited his Iranian counterpart to visit Islamabad from June 20 to 21, a Pakistani spokesman said.
The 2,600-kilometre overland gas pipeline project, with an estimated cost of about 4.5 billion dollars, has been opposed by the United States because of its concerns about Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Iran’s Amrollahi said his country was willing to sell gas to India and Pakistan and that talks were progressing. “We are in the pit field of decision-making,” he said.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said it hoped the bilateral meetings with Iran would “translate into trilateral meetings in order to work out an agreement between the three countries for the pipeline project”, he said.
India’s oil minister Mani Shankar Aiyar was in Pakistan last week and his visit concluded with the setting up of a joint working group to thrash out the details of the proposed pipeline project.
Mr Aiyar also held talks with Iran’s energy minister Bijan Namdar Zanghaneh in Tehran on Saturday to discussed the deal.
Negotiations for the pipeline began in 1994 but made little headway because of tensions between Pakistan and India.
However, since January 2004, the two energy-starved countries have been engaged in a peace process and relations are at their best for years.
The pipeline will supply gas from the massive South Pars offshore fields in the Gulf.—AFP
