NEW DELHI, Jan 23: Officials from India, Iran and Pakistan will meet in Tehran on Wednesday (today) to discuss the price of the gas to be supplied through the $7 billion Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.

“We have to first decide on the price of gas,” said one official here. “Other issues like how and by whom the project will be built and maintained can be negotiated later,” he added.

Anil Razdan, special secretary in the ministry of petroleum and natural gas, will lead the Indian side at the deliberations on Wednesday and Thursday (Jan 24-25). The meeting was earlier scheduled for Jan 20-21 but was deferred, according to a news report.Iran also named Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, director of international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) as its chief negotiator for the trilateral working committee on the project. “There was a wide gap between the prices Iran, as the seller, and India and Pakistan, as purchasers proposed,” he was quoted as saying.

The two-day meeting will look at resolving the differences,” he said.

Tehran had proposed a price equivalent to 10 per cent of the Brent crude oil price, plus a fixed cost of $1.20 per million British Thermal Units (Btu). At $50 per barrel, this translated into a price of $6.20 per million Btu at the Iran-Pakistan border.

On the other side, New Delhi does not want to pay more than $4.25 per million Btu for the gas delivered through the 2,100km line at its border.—APP