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A Research On The Tapi Gas Pipeline

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Nothing brings foes together like the good old-fashioned 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 persuasive power of positive economics over set geopolitical agendas. It may seem like a no-brainer that TAPI is great news for energy starved South Asia, but it risks becoming a coercive tool to strong-arm downstream partners when 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 they are pronounced dead. Also, we have the pyromaniacs of the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) who enjoy blowing up gas pipelines. Keeping TAPI secure, even with a special security force, will take some doing.

TAPI is foregrounded by South Asia’s fluid and often stormy dynamics. Pakistan and Afghanistan, for example, have spent most of 2015 locking horns over who supports which band of militants. 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
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