Tehran, Iran, Oct. 2
Trend:
A senior Iranian oil official said no executive framework has been developed for a memorandum of understanding signed recently between Russia and Pakistan on implementing a project to build an underwater gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan and India.
“The document for constructing an underwater gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan and India has been signed but not implemented yet,” Gholamreza Manouchehri, deputy for development and engineering at the National Iranian Oil Company told ILNA news agency on October 2.
Talks are still underway between Iran, Russia, Pakistan and India, he added.
Russian Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Yanovsky and Pakistan's Additional Secretary for Energy Sher Afgan Khan signed the document in Moscow on September 29.
The project was frozen in 2013 due to the imposition of sanctions against Iran, but its revival started in 2017. In November 2017, Russia and Iran signed a memorandum that envisaged Russian support for gas supplies from Iran to India.
In March, a Russian-Iranian working group on the implementation of the project had its first meeting.
According to Yanovsky, Russia and Pakistan were holding consultations on another project of building the 1,100-kilometer North-South Gas Pipeline between the Pakistani cities Karachi and Lahore to transport 12.3 billion cubic meters of gas per year.