Pakistan to start construction of TAPI anytime soon
The groundbreaking ceremony for 819-km long Pakistan segment of Turkmenistan Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline will probably take place in next couple of month, reports Pakistan’s leading newspaper Dawn, referring to senior officials from Inter State Gas Systems (ISGS) company. According to the source from ISGS, the civil works on TAPI pipeline will start by June or mid July this year. For this purpose, the contractor and the project experts have being mobilized to the groundbreaking sites - Chaman and Quetta in Balochistan province. The representative of ISGS said confirmed that Pakistan has almost completed geo-technical report, radar and aerial topographic surveys. The issues related to provision of funds for the project were settled. Recall, that recently, TAPI Steering committee approved acceleration plan www.orient.tm in order to reduce the time needed for construction of the pipeline and commission by the next year. Before the targeted time for completing the project was 2020. At present, Turkmenistan is on advanced stage of construction works. Afghanistan, which inaugurated the construction at the end of February, continues to build two compressor stations. Preparatory works are underway in India as well. The pipeline with diameter of 56-inch and capacity of 33 billion cu m will supply to Afghanistan up to 5 billion cu m of Turkmen gas annually. Pakistan and India will receive each 14 billion cu m of gas per annum.
