Pipeline linking Iran, Pakistan and India to help improve relations

A prominent expert has said the construction of a natural gas pipeline linking Iran, Pakistan and India will help improve relations between all the three countries and if a similar line is also built from Bangladesh to Northern India and possibly extended to Myanmar and Thailand, Asia will get an interlinking gas system. This was stated in a research paper written by a Pakistani academic Toufiq A Siddiqi, who has also worked for the United Nation (UN) currently teaching in the East-West Centre Honolulu, Hawaii.
According to Mr Siddiqi the energy needs of India and Pakistan are large enough to justify building most of the pipeline. He believes that the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon has put Central and South Asia in the limelight. Afghanistan has again borne the brunt of the damage but neighbouring countries, including Pakistan, the Central Asian republics and Iran have also been affected economically and socially.

Mr Siddiqi said, “Some good will come out of the loss and suffering if the global community avoided the mistakes of the past and remained committed to rebuild Afghanistan and help accelerate the pace of development in South and Central Asia. The sign that it may indeed happen look promising.”
Siddiqi maintains, if the international community gets “heavily engaged” in the rebuilding of Afghanistan, the chances for building of a natural gas pipeline and for the development of other infrastructure projects will be increased greatly. In view of the large energy shortfall projected for South Asia in the decades ahead, a pipeline from Central Asia will be in addition to, rather than instead of, the one from Iran to the Gulf States.

According to Mr Siddiqi, in 2000-01, 41 % of Pakistan’s commercial energy needs were met by natural gas, 45 % by oil, 9 % by hydropower, 4 % by coal and only 1 % by nuclear. During the past two decades, the use of natural gas in Pakistan has grown by about 5.2 % per year, reaching a total of just over 2 bn cfpd.
Mr Siddiqi notes, the substantial increase in energy use throughout Asia has been accompanied by a corresponding decline in environmental quality, particularly with respect to air pollution. Air quality has deteriorated because of the increased use of petroleum, while coal and oil used for electricity generation have also contributed to the pollution in a large way.

Turning to alternative means of energy, Mr Siddiqi says, Pakistan has concentrated mostly on using hydro and natural gas for electricity generation and has therefore been slow in experimenting with wind power. A 13 MW wind-based system is said to be under planning. The wind potential is limited to geographical areas with steady wind patterns, which are to be found only near the Pakistani coastline.
With the exception of the greater Karachi area, the coast of Pakistan is sparsely populated, while energy demand is mainly in the inland areas. As such, wind power will not be able to serve the energy needs of the densely populated parts of Pakistan.

Mr Siddiqi shows that the proven gas reserves of India will last 25 years as compared to 36 years in the case of Pakistan. Neither country has domestic natural gas reserves that will lead to any great increase in production. The estimated demand for natural gas in Pakistan already exceeds the supply by about 250 mm cfpd. This is expected to double by 2010.
The supply-demand gap will have to be met through imports, unless major new domestic discoveries are made, imports of natural gas could reach a bn cfpd by 2020. Pakistan has a well developed infrastructure for transporting natural gas, which serves a total of about 3.5 mm consumers.

Mr Siddiqi recalls that Pakistan was “less forthcoming” in the early 1990’s to the idea of a gas pipeline and linking it with India. The Indian request for the survey of Pakistan’s coastline was discouraged by Pakistan Navy which was suspicious of New Delhi’s motives. However the first Benazir Bhutto’s government was willing to allow unofficial contacts with India in search for a common ground.
However, by then opposition to any such cooperation was strong in the Indian bureaucracy, which did not favour reliance on Pakistan. They instead recommended a “deep sea pipeline”, linking India with Oman, but the costs were found to be extremely high. Mr Siddiqi said, “In the politics of the subcontinent, an economic win-win scenario does not necessarily ensure the success of a project.”