preview

A Research On The Tapi Gas Pipeline

Decent Essays

Nothing brings foes together like the lust for fossil fuels, but the shelf life of such makeshift alliances is hard to predict. The TAPI gas pipeline planned from Turkmenistan to India, by way of Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be a litmus test for the appeal of positive economics over set geopolitical agendas. TAPI, for sure, is great news for energy starved South Asia, but it risks becoming a coercive tool to strong-arm downstream partners when bilateral or trilateral relations sour.

Once online in 2019, TAPI will funnel 33 billion cubic meters of gas along a 1800 km pipeline from Turkmenistan’s Galkynysh field to Fazilka in Indian Punjab. It will pass through Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan, cross borders into Quetta, then Multan and finally Fazilka. This route, as you can imagine, poses sizable security headaches. Foremost, the Taliban, who viciously spring back to life every time someone pronounces them dead. Also, we have the pyromaniacs of the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) who enjoy blowing up gas pipelines.

South Asia’s fluid and often stormy dynamics foreground the TAPI project. Pakistan and Afghanistan, for example, have spent most of 2015 locking horns over who supports which brand of militancy. Like his forerunner Hamid Karzai, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani accuses Islamabad of letting the Haqqani network use Pakistani soil as a springboard to launch attacks in his country. As recently as December 8, Ghani alleged to reporters in Kabul that Pakistan was waging

Get Access