Kazakhstan - India oil pipeline to bypass Afghanistan and Pakistan

Indian companies have started the construction of a Trans-Asian oil pipeline from Kazakhstan to the coast of the Indian Ocean. Contrary to all expectations, the pipeline will be laid to bypass Afghanistan and Pakistan. India's state oil and gas corporation and its subsidiary, Videsh Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, have already received the necessary permission and guarantees from all the countries which are interested in this.

The pipeline from Kazakhstan will be laid across the city of Kashi in the [north]western Chinese [Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous] Region and then along the so-called Line of Truce [presumably, the Line of Control internationally accepted as the boundary between India and Pakistan] going across the Siachen Glacier to Indian Kashmir. Then the pipeline will go on to Himachal Pradesh and on to New Delhi.

So, the Trans-Asian oil pipeline will not be laid across Afghanistan and Pakistan, the two countries which most of all wanted to transit Kazakh oil. The laying of the pipelinewas one of the aims behind the current antiterrorist operation in Afghanistan, but now it has lost its practical value.