CentGas discusses next step for plans to build gas line through Afghanistan

Members of the CentGas consortium, set up to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, gathered in Ashgabat recently for a second round of discussions.
But it appears that the meeting did little to push the project forward.
The Turkmen press played up the positive aspects of the discussions on September 16-17, noting that the consortium members had discussed plans for preparatory work (such as organisation and design) on the pipeline project. These sources also reported that President Saparmurad Niyazov had signalled his commitment to the project by signing a resolution providing for the creation of a special working group for the pipeline, which would run from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan. Only one other such working group -- the body set up to handle the trans-Caspian pipeline project -- exists in Turkmenistan.
Nevertheless, even the Turkmen media sources noted that CentGas members had expressed some reservations about the feasibility of the project. Consortium members said it would be difficult to move ahead with work unless conditions in strife-ridden Afghanistan improved and unless a new leader for CentGas was chosen.
The U.S. oil company Unocal was in the fall of 1997 appointed the leader of CentGas. However, company officials said late last year they were abandoning the project because of the need to cut costs in the Caspian region and because of the repeated failure of efforts to resolve the long civil conflict in Afghanistan. Unocal had held a 54.11% stake in CentGas, and the remaining 45.89% was split between Delta of Saudi Arabia (15% ), Inpex and Itochu of Japan (7.22% each), the government of Turkmenistan (7% ), Hyundai Engineering and Construction of South Korea (5.54% ) and Crescent Group of Pakistan (3.89% ).
The U.S. company had planned to lay a 48-inch pipeline capable of carrying up to 20 billion cubic meters of gas per year along a 1,400-km route from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad gas field to the Pakistani port of Multan on the Arabian Sea. It estimatedthe cost of the project at about $ 1.9 billion -- or $ 2.4 billion if a branch line to India was also built. Turkmen media put the cost of the pipeline at anywhere between $ 2.0 billion to $ 3.5 billion.