‘Islamabad will stay beside Tehran in completion of the peace pipeline (another name for the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline),’ Spokesperson of the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Faisal said in his weekly press conference.
He pointed to the Pakistan’s growing demand for energy and noted that Islamabad is in contact with Tehran regarding the gas pipeline project between the two countries.
The assurance comes as leaders and ministers from Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India attended the groundbreaking ceremony of $22.5 billion natural gas pipeline project known as TAPI (also peace pipeline) on Friday in the western Afghan province of Herat.
Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani participated in the groundbreaking ceremony.
The project is expected to be completed by 2020. Plans call for an accompanying fiber-optic cable and eventually a railroad along part of the route, from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Iranian envoy to Pakistan criticized Islamabad for the delay in completion of the Iran-Pakistan gas project.
‘Transfer of gas from Iran to Pakistan could flourish the region,’ Iranian Ambassador to Pakistan Mehdi Honardoost said in a reference to delay in completion of the project by Islamabad for ‘unclear reasons’.
He noted that the Iranian part of the project is complete, but the project has not become operational on the Pakistani side.
The Iranian envoy was speaking at a seminar at the Strategic Vision Institute (SVI) on “Contemporary Relations between Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia: Present Challenges”.
Mr Honardoost said there was a consensus that the project was beneficial for Pakistan’s economy, but it was still “frozen” on the Pakistani side due to external and internal factors.
He believed that implementation of the pipeline project would help the two countries surmount some of their common problems, besides paying other economic dividends to them.
The 56-inch Iran–Pakistan gas pipeline, also known as the Peace pipeline, or IP Gas, is an under-construction 2,775-kilometre pipeline to deliver natural gas from Iran to Pakistan and into India. It would tap Iran’s large South Pars gas field.
