may 24th, 2012 CE
after years in limbo, it appears that the TAPI pipeline deal has been signed, rather quietly. http://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/article3449588.ece
as brahma chellaney pointed out, india lost $22 billion on a lucrative iranian gas deal because it pissed the iranians off to support obama's iran sanctions.
was this TAPI thing part of the pressure put on india to reduce its oil imports from iran, a la the hillary clinton visit etc?
there are others who have said the whole point of the afghanistan invasion was to support the TAPI pipeline, which was a dream project of chevron.
and now that we have seen how the paks are holding NATO hostage on the trucks, will anyone in their right senses agree to a pipeline through pak territory? and this is going through (presumably taliban-ruled) afghanistan, and through restive baluchistan in pakistan. real safe it will be, even if the ISI behaves and doesn't hold it hostage.
obviously, india's leaders are privy to information not known to the mortal man, or, well... the other possibilities are rather scary.
the iran-pak-india pipeline is perhaps a little less risky.
the least risky option would be an undersea iran-india pipeline, but it will be prohibitively expensive.
a much better option would be to build more LNG ports, and get the liquefied gas shipped in from anywhere (qatar, or russia, or venezuela): a pipeline is a huge, and non-fungible commitment because it only goes from point a to point b.
No comments:
Post a Comment