Pakistan Today: Bangladesh wants to fit into the pipeline

After signing of the gas sale purchase agreement by Pakistan and India with Turkmenistan, Bangladesh has also approached the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for inclusion in the four nation gas pipeline project. An official source said Bangladesh has written a letter to ADB showing interest to join the project. He said there is no issue of gas supply and extending the pipeline to Bangladesh, as Turkmenistan has enough gas reserves.

When asked how much gas Bangladesh was interested to import, he said their demand was less and could be provided as Afghanistan has refused its share. However, he said the pipeline plan will be initially executed between the four participating nations and Bangladesh could join in later.

About the way forward on the project, he said that the project will be built completely by single sponsor, unlike the Iran Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline which has a segmented approach. The search for the sponsor has started for the 1800 kilometer long pipeline that is estimated to cost more than $ 7.6 billion. There would be no difficulty in extending the pipeline to 2,500 km if Bangladesh joins in, the source said adding that already upto 7,000 km long pipelines were in operation. After the main sponsor is finalized and financial close achieved, the detailed engineering design will be finalized to complete the project by mid-2017.

About renegotiation of the IP gas price, the source said the process will be started soon as the price of Turkmen gas is less than the Iranian gas. There is a clause for renegotiation gas price in IP agreement, if Pakistan managed to get fewer price from any other source. MORE