Radio “Azatlyk”, with reference to Pakistani media outlet The News, reported that Pakistan asked Turkmenistan to lower the gas price before the TAPI ground breaking of the pipeline to be laid down in Pakistan’s territory.
According to The News, Pakistan submitted a letter to Turkmenistan authorities seeking the dialogue for review of the gas price downward five months ago.Moreover, Special Assistant to Prime Minister of Pakistan overseeing oil and gas Nadeem Babar personally made the same proposal to Turkmenistan at the latest meeting of representatives of TAPI member countries in Ashgabat.
It is reported that Afghanistan, Pakistan and India have previously concluded the bilateral agreements with Turkmenistan to purchase Turkmen gas, but now all three importers (Afghanistan acts as a transit country comment by “Chronicles of Turkmenistan”) intend to disclose prices and demand that the prices be reviewed.
The delegation from Turkmenistan is expected to pay a visit to Pakistan in late June.
Let us recall that in August 2019 the newly-elected Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan was skeptical about viability of the TAPI construction and shared the intentions of resuming the construction of the Iran-Pakistan-Indian gas pipeline project (IPI).
However, in May 2019 it became known that Iran filed a lawsuit against Pakistan to the International Court of Arbitration.
Iran was discontent with the fact that Pakistan was delaying the launch of the IPI construction. Islamabad, in its turn, was concerned about potential consequences of cooperating with Tehran due to sanctions which had been imposed again on Iran.