BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 21
By Jeila Aliyeva - Trend:
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov hopes that the construction of the gas pipeline will soon begin on the territory of Pakistan, Trend reports with reference to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan.
This was said during a telephone conversation between President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and President of Pakistan Arif Alvi.
The construction and installation works of TAPI on the Turkmen section are currently in the final stage, while recently a memorandum of understanding was signed between Turkmenistan and Afghanistan on the selection of land plots on the Afghan part of the TAPI.
Turkmenistan and Pakistan noted the importance of TAPI in the countries ' trade and economic relations.
During the telephone conversation, the parties highlighted that both countries are ready to increase cooperation. In particular, the development of transport and communication infrastructure and the construction of power transmission lines were also identified as promising areas of interstate and regional partnerships.
The countries have sufficient potential to increase the indicators of bilateral trade and diversify mutual supplies. In this aspect, the expediency of conducting a thorough joint analysis of the general state of trade and economic relations and the dynamics of trade turnover was noted.
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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