BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 28
By Jeila Aliyeva - Trend:
Afghanistan has offered to open a branch of one of the domestic banks and health houses in the border provinces of Turkmenistan, Trend reports, citing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan.
The proposals were announced during a videoconference between the municipal administrators of the border provinces of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan on May 27, 2021.
The parties also discussed the implementation of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan–Pakistan (TAP) fiber–optic communication line, the Turgundi-Herat railway line, as well as plans for cooperation between the municipal administrations of certain provinces of the two countries.
The Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India Pipeline (TAPI), also known as Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline, is a natural gas pipeline being developed by the Galkynysh – TAPI Pipeline Company Limited with the participation of the Asian Development Bank.
The pipeline will transport natural gas from the Galkynysh Gas Field in Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan and then to India. Construction on the project started in Turkmenistan on 13 December 2015.
The length of the Turkmen section of the TAPI pipeline, the construction of which was launched in December 2015, will be 205 kilometers (the main operations are carried out on the 120th kilometer). The pipeline will pass through the Afghan cities of Herat and Kandahar (816 kilometers), through the cities of Quetta and Multan across Pakistani territory (819 kilometers), and reach the city of Fazilka in India.
The pipeline’s design capacity is planned to be 33 billion cubic meters of gas per year, and the project’s cost - about $8 billion.
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