Pak awaiting India's response on IPI pipeline deal

Dubai, Jul 1: Pakistan is keen to see the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) oil pipeline project through, and awaits India's readiness to engage with it (Pakistan) in this regard, said the country's Finance Minister Naveed Qamar.

"Pakistan is keen to move ahead and I want to see whether India is ready to engage with us fully or it would like to spend some more time thinking about it," The News quoted Qamar as saying in an interview with a Dubai-based paper. He was speaking in Dubai after leading a high-level Pakistani delegation to the 17th session of the Pakistan-Iran Joint Economic Commission meeting, which concluded here Sunday. According to the report, both Pakistan and Iran have agreed that all aspects of the project have been covered and a Gas Sales and Purchase Agreement (GSPA) between Iran and Pakistan has been finalised.

The proposed 7.5-billion-dollar pipeline would run 2615 km from Iran to India through Pakistan and initially carry 2120 million cubic feet of gas a day. The pipeline issue had come up for discussion during the course of a meeting between India's Oil Minister Murli Deora and Iran's Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari in Jeddah last week.

Reiterating India's commitment to the project in the course of the meeting, held on the sidelines of the Jeddah energy summit convened by Saudi Arabia to discuss spiraling global oil prices, Deora had briefed his Iranian counterpart on the meeting between India and Pakistan at Islamabad in April this year.

Deora had said India was hopeful of signing the pipeline deal with Iran and Pakistan soon. He said that with Pakistan getting a new oil minister, India needed to discuss a few minor issues with its neighbour. Tehran is going to host a meeting next month with India and Pakistan on the IPI gas project.

ANI