ISLAMABAD, May 7: Pakistan has invited Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov and Afghan interim authority Chairman Hamid Karzai to visit Islamabad during the last week of May to re-activate $2 billion Turkmenistan to Pakistan gas pipeline.

This is expected to coincide with the visit of a delegation of Russian energy giant Gazprom accompanied by Russian energy minister to Pakistan to hold discussions on their possible partnership in the consortium undertaking $3 billion trans-Pakistan Iran to India gas pipeline. Dates are being finalised on that account as well for the last week of May. The Gazprom delegation had recently visited both Iran and India.

Foreign Office sources told Dawn that earlier Pak-Turkmen summit meeting was scheduled to be held in Ashkabad to discuss matters relating to joint efforts for the Afghan reconstruction and reactivation of pipeline project that had become almost dormant for the last three years.

Pakistan has now, however, invited President Niyazov to visit Islamabad where Chairman Karzai would also be invited for a tripartite summit. The proposal to shift the summit venue from Ashkabad to Islamabad has also been conveyed to Karzai.

Niyazov has accepted the invitation but concurrence from both Kabul and Ashkabad would be required to finalise the dates, the sources said.

Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan had constituted a working group in 1998 for quarterly expert meetings to pursue the pipeline project but these meetings were discontinued in late 2000 due to widening gap between Taliban and US authorities.

The project had already faced a serious blow when Centcom consortium leader Unocal left the project, sighting continued unrest in the Afghanistan.

The visit of a high-level delegation of Gazprom, led by its President Rem Vyakhirev, was foiled last year by India at the eleventh hour because the Gazprom chief was accompanying Russian President Putin to India from where he was to come to Pakistan.

Gazprom is not only interested to take part in the import of natural gas from Iran to Pakistan and then onward to India but is also separately looking into feasibilities to replace American firm Unocal in the Centgas consortium.

Besides the import projects, sources said, Gazprom will also discuss with Pakistan utilities the possibility of developing international gas infrastructure from Pakistan gas fields to consumer centres.

This apparently intensifies regional natural gas politics with US interests in Caspean Sea reserves of $5 trillion and energy hungry India as Pakistan keeps its import options open with the policy objective of lowest delivery price at the earliest possible time.

SHORTFALL: Sources in the petroleum and natural resources ministry said Pakistan would be facing gas shortfall of around 500mmcfd from next five to six years.

The shortfall, they said, was imminent in view of the fact that the mega import pipeline project would take at least two years to complete if construction started today.

ENERGY SOURCES: Informed sources in the energy sector said two sides have started initial consultations to materialise benefits arising out of the removal of economic sanctions on Pakistan in the post-Sept 11 situation.

They said Unocal, the US energy firm that led a consortium to construct Turkmenistan-Pakistan pipeline in 1997 but later pulled out of the project, quoting continued fighting in the war- torn Afghanistan, is likely to come forward once again along with a couple of other US firms once peace returned to Afghanistan.