### Turkmenistan-Pakistan-India

One option for Turkmen gas export is a route through Pakistan and onwards to India via Afghanistan. On October 27, 1996, President Niyazov granted approval to the Unocal Corporation’s proposed route from Turkmenistan to India. Along with five other international companies and the Turkmen government, Unocal had formed a consortium known as the Central Asia Gas Pipeline, Ltd., or CentGas, that hoped to build an approximately 1000 mile long pipeline south from the Dauletabad field in Chardzhou, Turkmenistan, to Pakistan’s marine terminal on the Arabian Sea, via western Afghanistan. According to Unocal, the total project would cost US $1.9 billion to Pakistan, plus an additional US $600 million for the eventual connection from Pakistan to India .

Unfortunately, the route from Turkmenistan to India is plagued with conflicts. For one thing, there is long standing hostility between Pakistan and India, dating back to the British partition of 1947. The ongoing debate over the legal status of Jammu and Kashmir has resulted in continuous fighting and strained relations between the neighboring countries. Resolving this long-standing conflict obviously cannot occur overnight, but a mutually beneficial project of large scale, such as a pipeline from Turkmenistan to the subcontinent might prove instrumental to fostering a cordial relationship between and India and Pakistan.

Before the discovery of additional natural gas reserves in Pakistan, economies of scale were the chief justification for a pipeline to India. With such a discovery however, the economies of scale argument is not really applicable to Pakistan. Nonetheless, Pakistan would still benefit economically from a joint pipeline because it would receive transit fees for the movement of gas across its borders. Similarly, according to Tongia and Arunachalam, authors of “Natural Gas Imports by South Asia: Pipelines or Pipedreams?” since a joint pipeline would reduce the final cost of natural gas for India to significantly below the cost of LNG, the pipeline is economically sound from India’s point of view as well.

Afghanistan poses the main impediment to pipeline construction because of the ongoing civil war in the country. Though Unocal recognized both the financial risk of borrowing as well as the physical risk of running pipelines through war torn Afghanistan, it had nevertheless expected the project to be successfully implemented in the near future. However, Unocal scrapped this project the day after the United States government mounted cruise missile strikes against training bases in Afghanistan.

Other possible routes for Turkmen gas: Turkmenistan-Iran-Turkey, Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan-China-Japan, and a trans-Caspian route to Turkey.

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