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Iran won’t cancel gas export project to Pakistan

Business Materials 26 November 2014 13:48 (UTC +04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov.26

By Fatih Karimov - Trend:

Iran will not halt the IP project (gas exporting project to Pakistan), the country's Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said, Iran's Mehr news agency reported on November 26.

Iran has almost completed the establishment of the IP pipeline in its territory and is ready to export gas to Pakistan as soon as the country builds its own section of the pipeline, the minister said.

Pakistani sources report that Iran has unilaterally ended government-to-government cooperation agreement with Pakistan and is not even prepared to offer $500 million for the construction of the long-awaited IP gas pipeline project.

After this decision the much-talked-about Iran-Pakistan IP gas pipeline project has become unfeasible, Pakistan's Daily Times reported.

On October 12, Pakistani Finance Minister Ishaq Dar informed his Iranian counterpart Ali Tayyebnia that the Pakistani government had approved the 700-kilometer section of the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline from Gwadar to Nawabshah and that Pakistan was considering various alternatives to meet the financial requirements.

Iran and Pakistan signed an agreement over the construction of the gas pipeline in 1995.

Iran has already built its 900-kilometer share of the pipeline on its own soil and is waiting for the 700-kilometer Pakistani side of the pipeline to be built.

Pakistan had invited bids but no company participated in it. Iran committed two tranches of $250 million each to lay Pakistan's portion of the pipeline but later it declined to provide financing, saying it was ready to provide gas but would not provide funds for Pakistani portion of the project.

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