India Mulling Rejoining Iran Gas Line: Report

Islamabad, April 10, IRNA -- India mulls to rejoin the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project owing to its fast increasing energy requirements, Pakistani media quoted an Indian diplomat as saying. The unidentified Indian diplomat told the local the Online news agency that his government is actively contemplating looking back on the option of IPI. He claimed that India had never abandoned the project, officially. “It was just gone down on the priority list mainly due to security concerns in Pakistan,” he added. Earlier, India had practically abandoned the Iran-Pakistan-India Gas Pipeline project for obvious reasons of entering into a nuclear deal with the US. After India disembarked the trilateral mechanism for IPI, the pipeline was naturally left as only Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline. According to the diplomat, the announcement to give effect to the rejuvenation of IPI was expected during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Pakistan in the near future. Singh had accepted President Asif Ali Zardari’s invitation on Sunday to visit Pakistan on mutually convenient dates. “We are an energy-deficient country and to sustain our high growth rate and ensure energy security, we need energy from every possible source,” the diplomat observed. Under the deal finalized in March last year, Iran will supply 750 million cubic feet of gas to Pakistan daily by 2014. Indian diplomats, however, tried to dispel the impression that Washington had been exerting pressure on India not to pursue the IPI pipeline project in view of Iran’s controversial nuclear program./end