New Delhi
16 April 2007
The Iran-Pakistan-Pakistan gas pipeline was viable and India would
welcome the participation of Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom, according to
Union Minister of State of External Affairs Anand Sharma. He referred China's
"aggressive run" to reiterate that India needed natural gas for maintaining the ideal mix
of energy resources and for sustaining accelerated economic growth.
"We are keen to have energy cooperation with Russia," Mr Sharma told this newspaper
on the sidelines of an international conference on India's expanding gas markets. He
was responding to the question whether Gazprom's participation in the Iran-Pakistan-
India pipeline project will be useful. (Mr Sharma on Monday stood in for Minister of
External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee, who is recovering from a road accident.)
Gazprom's Deputy Chief Executive Officer Alexander Ananenkov has said on the
occasion of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov's visit last week to Pakistan that
Gazprom would decide on its participation in the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline after
examining the feasibility study provided by Pakistan.
(In March 2006 rpt March 2006 Mr Fradkov told a joint news conference with Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi that Gazprom will want to explore opportunities
of meeting India's energy requirement. He had said that Russia has experience in
constructing pipelines and ways and means could be evolved to involve Moscow in the
pipeline project.)
Earlier, in his address to the conference, Mr Sharma said, "[The Iran-Pakistan-India gas
pipeline] is still a project, [in an] initial stage ... there have been many hiccups ...
whether it is on or not it is difficult to say. We had negotiated a price with Iran but there
were some subsequent developments [so we] renewed discussions. We have been
talking to Pakistan and now there have been suggestions that perhaps better to take gas
from Pakistan when it comes to India-Pakistan border, then it is perhaps more assured ...
this is the new thinking."
He said that the ideal mix, which could sustain economic activity without degrading
nature, would have to have gas in it. ""Gas and other clean sources of energy are badly
needed by India [for] accelerated growth .... There is an aggressive run globally. Even in
our neighbourhood there is a race for garnering these resources and reserves," he said,
indirectly referring China.
He observed that India was uniquely placed to expoit large quantities of natural gas that
was available in her neighbourhood. "We are looking at the possibliities of receiving or
importing gas both at the eastern as well as the western coast," he said, alluding to the
India-Pakistan-India, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India and Myanmar-
Bangladesh-India pipelines.
"[One] cannot say with certainty which project will be executed first and when [but] all
three are viable ... these negotiations are not easy ones, [it is] not a decision which India
alone can make, [India] has to make in consultation with others," he said. "Geopolitical
situation often becomes a constaint for realising the latent potential," he explained.
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